Safety at sea
Cruise ship operators have swept up experts from top hospitals and universities to inform how they move forward.
Obviously, all this is unsustainable, especially when cruise operators finally begin welcoming passengers back once more. Yet with thousands of people eating, drinking and socialising together in spaces barely the length of a few football pitches, figuring out a solution is far from easy. It’s therefore unsurprising that companies are working hard to get procedures in place early. By working with scientists and doctors, they hope to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2020 – with lessons for cruise ships long after we are all vaccinated.
“Public health education – in the communities we touch, but also for the guests and crew that come aboard – continues to play a vital role.”
Dennis Peyton, Vikand New expertise on board 170 Number of
cruise ships that use Vikand's medical services
Vikand 28
Though the spread of coronavirus on cruise ships like the Diamond Princess got the attention of pundits struggling to understand a new and worrying disease, it was far from a singular case. Cruise operators have been long used to dealing with medical emergencies aboard. From oxygen tanks to defibrillators and stretchers, indeed, American College of Emergency Physicians standards have dictated the sophistication of cruise ship infirmaries for years. “I really would have to acknowledge the work of not only the cruise lines, but also their partnerships collectively – with academia and with local, national and international health authorities – to develop policies both before and during the pandemic,” says Dennis Peyton, director of the public health practice at Vikand, a company that provides medical services to over 170 cruise vessels.
That being said, the speed at which Covid-19 can spread and its capacity to leave large numbers of passengers at risk has spurred the industry into action. If nothing else, that can be seen in the frantic moves some operators have made to bring experienced medical professionals aboard. At Viking, for example, Vice Admiral Raquel Bono was recently appointed the operator’s chief health
officer. She once served as director of the US Defense Health Agency. Dr Calvin Johnson is another grand arrival. Earning his stripes as medical director for New York City’s Department of Health, and as secretary of health for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he’s now the chief medical officer at Royal Caribbean. These appointments make sense both from a healthcare perspective and a PR one. As both Peyton and Johnson explain, after all, there are plenty of parallels in fighting diseases on land and sea. “In many ways, it’s very similar,” says Johnson, adding that, just like cruise ships, even isolated clinics and hospitals can quickly become swamped by a new disease. No wonder, then, that operators are using many antiviral tactics now familiar on land. At Norwegian, for example, passenger capacity will be reduced to help with social distancing. Princess Cruises, meanwhile, is mandating the use of face masks in public spaces. Royal Caribbean is even considering trademarking its own brand of face covering.
Still, it’d be wrong to suggest that public health at sea is totally analogous with gatherings on dry land. As Johnson notes, the transmissibility of coronavirus can cause serious problems when hundreds or thousands of people are trapped together in a floating hotel with nowhere else to go. While people typically infect around two of their fellows with coronavirus, that number can rise to seven on cruise ships. Perhaps for this reason, Peyton puts a premium on educating customers about best practices. “Public health education – in those communities we’ll touch, but also for the guests and crew that come aboard – will continue to play a vital role.”
Cruises in the age of coronavirus So, beyond the basics – masks and lines of scotch tape 6ft apart – what might the future of cruise travel actually look like? To answer that question, operators have done more than simply recruiting new medical officers. Rather, they’ve swept up experts from the best hospitals and universities on earth, gathering them into a kind of clinical Navy Seals outfit. A typical example comes from MSC, which boasts a “blue-ribbon” team of specialists to
World Cruise Industry Review /
www.worldcruiseindustryreview.com
Vikand
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