Interested reading the comments on this topic having had our dramas recently so personally cannot ever understand anyone contemplating a cruise holiday without taking sensible precautions for example being properly vaccinated.
We have recently returned from a 3 week trip from Mumbai to Athens on the Mars and it sounds like the same itinerary as Pushka commented on.
Unfortunately after about a week onboard I started to feel very unwell and within a short time needed to call on the ships medical services in the early hours of the morning and very quickly it was established I had a very bad dose of covid, we don’t want to think what the outcome might have been had I not have been fully vaccinated.
Fortunately following guidance from the ship’s medics I did not need to leave the ship for medical treatment at the next port in Saudi Arabia which was a possibility as was quite unwell. Following a number of days of isolation I started to recover, however one interesting aspect we found strange was my wife who admittedly tested negative did not have to isolate, however she did as felt it was the correct thing to do.
There was an area of concern, we noticed a lack of basic hand hygiene in particular the world cafe, very few people were washing their hands when entering, admittedly you cannot force people to do so but there was no encouragement from any staff to do so. After about a week into the cruise and coincidentally when I became ill were there suddenly tannoy announcements from the cruise director to remind about hand washing, obviously there was a problem onboard. We don’t know to what extent but did speak to other guests who had also had to isolate so something was going through the ship.
The good news, I have almost fully recovered and despite our experience we have to commend the assistance we received onboard from the ship, in particular the medical team and also the room stewards. At the time I first became unwell we needed to call on the ship’s medics at 3am, we were two days from the next port so quite an unnerving experience for both of us and the manner and swift response from them was reassuring.
I think the one thing we all dread is being taken ill on holiday especially on a cruise ship many miles from anywhere, the one big positive for us that we can take from this experience is that Viking did really look after us for which we are most grateful and it’s not put us off too much travelling again! We hope going forward though they do encourage more hand hygiene when entering their restaurants something we have communicated to them strongly since our return.