My husband and I both got Covid on our cruise in Dec '21-Jan '23. Thankfully we never felt very bad, took Sudafed, and were finished with symptoms in about 3 days. We did receive FCC after about two months. It just appeared in our accounts one day when I happened to be checking on another cruise.
Read on if you want to read more about our Covid experience on the Nieuw Statendam.
DH started getting congested and had a slightly sore throat about day 9. I felt fine. He self-tested and was positive, so we called the infirmary and they came up and tested us both in our room. He was positive and I was negative. He was told to self-quarantine for at least 5 days and I was told I could go about normal life on ship, just wear a mask. I wore a mask, minimized any trips outside the room, and didn't take the elevator anymore, just in case I was going to get it, too.
Two days later, I had the same symptoms and tested positive. Same routine - called infirmary, they tested me, confirmed I was positive and said they would retest me on day 5. DH was tested on his day 5 and was negative. He got to go back to normal life. On my day 5, it was St. Thomas and it's my favorite port. They came and tested me and I was still positive. I was told I could not leave the room until the end of the cruise. I was crushed, to say the least. I felt perfectly fine, would have been very happy to wear a mask (we were wearing them in public areas before we were sick), but I was stuck in the room. They came every day after that and kept testing me, but I kept testing positive, so I ended up missing the entire 7-day second portion of our back-to-back cruise.
The ship staff was wonderful. We had terrific room service food, even from Pinnacle and Tamarind. They gave us free wifi and the front desk manager checked on us daily to see if we needed anything. Our room stewards kept our room clean and didn't fear us (they said they were vaxed and not worried.)
Getting off the ship was interesting. I self-tested negative the night before disembarkation. Disembarkation Day way day 10 and I had no symptoms, so we planned to fly home (and did). But, we were escorted to a holding area near the forward door of the ship, along with three other Covid passengers and their significant others. Once we were allowed to disembark, we were turned over to the ground staff and then were stuck standing outside in very chilly, windy weather for at least a half hour. We dressed for it, but the others with us were wearing typical light cotton Florida clothes and they were freezing. We weren't allowed to go through the terminal and the gate in the fence was locked and no one could be found with a key. Finally, they decided to walk us to the driveway entrance of the fence. Once on the other other side of the fence, we were pointed toward the taxis and that was it. We truly felt like lepers and that they couldn't get rid of us fast enough. Not a great end to a cruise, but at least we could fly home that day.