ASTA President & CEO Zane Kerby says new CDC guidance recommending cruise travel be avoided regardless of vaccination status is just the latest example of "knee-jerk reactions singling out travel for discriminatory treatment."
"An increase in reported COVID cases on cruise ships should surprise no one given the worldwide spike driven by the highly-transmissible omicron variant," Kerby said.
"The difference between enjoying a cruise vacation and visiting your local grocery store or restaurant, however, is the extraordinarily stringent anti-COVID measures put in place voluntarily by the cruise lines, in close consultation with the CDC."
Kerby added: "If the average cruise ship were a U.S. state, it would be the safest in the country - by far. According to Royal Caribbean Group, since cruising restarted in the U.S. in June 2021, its ships have carried 1.1 million guests with 1,745 people testing positive - a positivity rate of 0.02 percent. Among U.S. states as of January 4, Alaska's positivity rate is the lowest at 9.4 percent, with Georgia's the highest at 38.7 percent."
The travel advisor association leader says cruising "is no more responsible for the spread of the Omicron variant than travellers from southern Africa were at the outset of the current crisis."
Kerby says travel continues to take a hit because it is regulated more heavily than other activities. "It brings to mind the old saying, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' This pattern needs to stop," he stated.
He concludes: "At this stage in the pandemic, the tools exist to allow us to combat this virus without crippling an entire sector of the U.S. economy in the process. Let's use them."
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