Carnival Freedom cruise ship docks in Miami, third to return with positives.
Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images
The Carnival Freedom cruise ship returned to Miami this sunday after an undetermined group of passengers tested positive for covid-19, so it could not dock in the Caribbean islands of Boanire and Aruba, local media reported.
The Carnival Freedom, third cruise ship to depart from Miami and report cases of covid-19 on board in recent days, left this South Florida city on December 18 and stopped in Curaçao last Tuesday.
His planned stops in the Caribbean islands of Bonaire, on Wednesday, and Aruba, on Thursday, were canceled, although he was allowed to dock in the Dominican Republic on Friday, Christmas Eve.
The number of infected passengers has not been specified so far. The ship docked in Port Miami today with 2,497 passengers and 1,112 crew on board, according to Local 10 television.
The passengers received a letter of apology from the captain of the cruise informing them that they will receive a credit of $ 100 per room and a free bingo game, the same outlet detailed.
“The rapid spread of the Omicron variant affects how destinations respond to even a small number of cases,” the ship’s captain wrote in the letter dated December 22.
A passenger, Ashley Peterson, wrote on her Twitter account today:
“Just a hallway full of covid patients at the @CarnivalCruise. But Carnival wants to stick to the ‘small number’ lie they keep telling. It is likely that there are more than 100 people and it continues to increase, as more will test positive in the coming days, ”he speculated.
Last Thursday, Royal Caribbean noted that a total of 55 passengers and crew members of the Odyssey of the Seas, which sailed the previous Saturday from a port in Fort Lauderdale, tested positive for the disease during an eight-day cruise and on the that 95% of the people on board had the “complete vaccination schedule”.
The announcement came less than a week after this company reported that 48 people from the Symphony of the Seas ship, designated as the world’s largest cruise ship, tested positive for covid-19 upon their return to the Port of Miami after a week-long trip to the Caribbean.
Cruises are one of the sectors most affected by the pandemic in the US Given the number of infections registered on board these ships, for more than a year they could not sail from the country’s ports, which caused millions in losses to shipping companies .
Florida broke its own record for daily cases this Saturday for the second day in a row by adding 32,850 new cases this Christmas Day, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
According to the CDC, the Omicron variant has already become predominant in the United States, since between last December 12 and 18 it accounted for 73.2% of new cases.
The United States continues to be one of the countries hardest hit by the covid-19 pandemic with more than 816,000 deaths and 52.1 million infections since March 2020, indicates the Johns Hopkins University count.
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