Mr. Fain believes the 74 recommendations of the Healthy Sail Panel were instrumental in getting the CDC to understand that the cruise lines had a clear path to restart cruising safely, without putting the public at risk.
He point out that getting cruise ships operational again will not happen overnight.
The framework established by the CDC will require a lot of work for passengers to be able to get back onboard.
“It will take some time to go from where we are to our first commercial sailings. I can’t wait, but it will take some time because the order calls for a lot of details that will need to be specified, clarified or adjusted over the coming period.”
Cruise lines have to undertake a variety of steps to come close to restarting their businesses.
“We have to train our crew in the new procedures and we have to get them safely back to our ships. This includes having every one of them take multiple covid tests before they leave home and after they arrive to their home port and then engaging in a quarantine period after they’ve done all the testing.“
“We have to reposition our ships, update their certifications, provision them, make physical modifications to support the physical distancing and upgrade the medical care on board. “
“And most significantly, we are committed to and the framework calls for a series of trials, sailings where we will road test all of our new protocols using employees and other volunteers to stand in for guests.”
He believes there are four reasons for optimism: masks, testing, therapies and vaccines.
“While each of those factors will help contain the spread next year, it’s a cumulative combination of all of these taken together that I hope will constrain the risk of the virus causing another comparable surge after we get through this current one.”