Rapid COVID-19 testing prior to boarding a possibility

[Lupush]

In an article posted in the Miami Herald today, RCCL is considering COVID-19 Testing prior to being permitted to board a cruise ship.  

 

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article244849552.html

 

Personally, if rapid tests were available to allow guests to cruise safely I would be totally willing to pay a surcharge to be able to take my favorite kind of vacation.  Wondering what everyone's thoughts are on this?

[Fido Chuckwagon]

8 minutes ago, Lupush said:

In an article posted in the Miami Herald today, RCCL is considering COVID-19 Testing prior to being permitted to board a cruise ship.  

 

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/tourism-cruises/article244849552.html

 

Personally, if rapid tests were available to allow guests to cruise safely I would be totally willing to pay a surcharge to be able to take my favorite kind of vacation.  Wondering what everyone's thoughts are on this?

The average time to get your COVID test results back in the US right now is about 7 days.  The idea that people who go on a cruise are going to all have access to rapid testing is ludicrous, unless things change significantly.  

Edited August 11, 2020 by Fido Chuckwagon

[macandlucy]

I imagine that the cruise lines would buy their own  quick test kits instead of relying on the government to run the tests.

 

 I like this idea a lot for embark. Now what about ports?

[twoznuff2]

Sounds like a good idea but what about people who have already had Covid and are past the contagious/sick stage. It is still possible to test positive for 3 months after you have had covid.

[vintagegarage]

 

 

 

Pre-cruise covid tests are useless unless a positive test result discovered later in the cruise won't abort the cruise.  Regardless of the amount of pre-cruise testing that is done, right now, all it would take is a single case to be found on board while the cruise is underway to abort the cruise.  Cruising won't resume until covid cases can be handled routinely in the ships medical centers, or until the port cities are ready to accept covid patients off-loaded from the ship for routine local treatment.

[steamboats]

MSC wants to do the rapid antigen swap tests which gives a result within 30 min. This is not a PCR test for active virus but very reliable. The PCR test takes at least 70 min. But they can do this as well onboard (or at the terminal) for those which have a special risk or were tested positive with the antigen test.

 

steamboats

[HaveWeMetYet]

1 hour ago, macandlucy said:

I imagine that the cruise lines would buy their own  quick test kits instead of relying on the government to run the tests.

 

 I like this idea a lot for embark. Now what about ports?

You will only be going on cruise line sponsored excursions when in port. No getting off and going on your own. Those cruise line excursions will be designed so you have no contact with the local population. Think driving tours or some type of tour where you can be isolated. Kinda like what you see with 1st grade field trips. Line up behind teacher and hold hands so no one gets lost.

[Lupush]

3 hours ago, twoznuff2 said:

Sounds like a good idea but what about people who have already had Covid and are past the contagious/sick stage. It is still possible to test positive for 3 months after you have had covid.

Then they wouldn't be able to cruise.

[hladygirl]

A Covid test is only good for that day. Anyone exposed may not turn positive or have symptoms for 14 days. This would not assure you that no one on the ship has Covid. It will tell you they have not tested positive yet. 

[oteixeira]

Again, this whole notion of sailing without covid is just wrong headed.  The correct question is how will the cruise line handle it WHEN there is a positive case, because there will be.  I trust the the big 3 will have this figured out before cruising starts back up (and my guess is the CDC will require it).

[martinchem]

I guess it could work if they retest for covid every other day.

[mpk]

3 hours ago, HaveWeMetYet said:

You will only be going on cruise line sponsored excursions when in port. No getting off and going on your own. Those cruise line excursions will be designed so you have no contact with the local population. Think driving tours or some type of tour where you can be isolated. Kinda like what you see with 1st grade field trips. Line up behind teacher and hold hands so no one gets lost.

 

I guess for the foreseeable future, it'd be those "city tour" type excursions.   Drive by only, no mingling with the locals.

[seaman11]

1 hour ago, hladygirl said:

A Covid test is only good for that day. Anyone exposed may not turn positive or have symptoms for 14 days. This would not assure you that no one on the ship has Covid. It will tell you they have not tested positive yet. 

this is true , what if we catch it on the plane the day of or before. 

[zqvol]

7 hours ago, Fido Chuckwagon said:

The average time to get your COVID test results back in the US right now is about 7 days.  The idea that people who go on a cruise are going to all have access to rapid testing is ludicrous, unless things change significantly.  

Cruisers will have access to rapid tests, the question is when. I predict that it will be about 8 to 10 months. When cruising begins again it will be because these rapid tests are available.

[zqvol]

5 hours ago, HaveWeMetYet said:

You will only be going on cruise line sponsored excursions when in port. No getting off and going on your own. Those cruise line excursions will be designed so you have no contact with the local population. Think driving tours or some type of tour where you can be isolated. Kinda like what you see with 1st grade field trips. Line up behind teacher and hold hands so no one gets lost.

I don't believe this for a minute.

[Fido Chuckwagon]

2 hours ago, oteixeira said:

Again, this whole notion of sailing without covid is just wrong headed.  The correct question is how will the cruise line handle it WHEN there is a positive case, because there will be.  I trust the the big 3 will have this figured out before cruising starts back up (and my guess is the CDC will require it).

It’s really not possible and is why cruising is dead as an industry.  It’s a highly infectious and dangerous disease and cruising is a medium where disease spread like wildfire.  FFS a cruise ship with only 67 people in Alaska couldn’t even cruise without a positive case on their first cruise! 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

2 hours ago, martinchem said:

I guess it could work if they retest for covid every other day

All that will do is let the cruise line watch as it spreads throughout the ship.  Better than nothing, but won’t stop it.

[BirdTravels]

10 hours ago, Fido Chuckwagon said:

The average time to get your COVID test results back in the US right now is about 7 days.  The idea that people who go on a cruise are going to all have access to rapid testing is ludicrous, unless things change significantly.  

You don't have "access to rapid testing", the cruise line invests and buys a set of rapid test machines. The 7 days is because local test centers do not have any test equipment. All they do is connect samples. They package their samples and ship them off to labs... which incur time to ship and then a backlog in processing. 

 

Other example: While some locations use hand scanner thermometers to check employees entering their buildings, causing long lines of non-socially distant people, other office buildings have invested in thermal scanning cameras where you walk through  and get scanned with little or no delay. 

 

 

[Trimone]

They are in cookoo land, Covid-19 can be dormant for between 1 to 14 days, yes not show up on any test... Any test is only good for the moment it’s taken. 

[hamrag]

14 hours ago, HaveWeMetYet said:

You will only be going on cruise line sponsored excursions when in port. No getting off and going on your own. Those cruise line excursions will be designed so you have no contact with the local population....

 

8 hours ago, zqvol said:

I don't believe this for a minute.

 

You may not believe it, but it's what MSC are doing with the 2 cruiseships planned to commence sailing later this month!! See link below:

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/23349-msc-gets-approval-to-restart-cruising-in-august.html

 

This is the relevant part in the article:

“The new procedures include universal COVID-19 testing for all guests and crew prior to embarkation, protected ashore visits at each destination only with an MSC Cruises’ excursion as an added level of protection for our guests and the introduction of a COVID Protection Plan for further peace of mind for our guests. With all of these measures in place, we aim to offer our guests the safest possible vacation.”

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by hamrag

[momofmab]

Many universities here in the U.S. have set up quick testing centers to test students arriving on campus, so I believe it's doable for the cruise lines as well.  Nonetheless, I agree that without an effective vaccine that everyone is required to get, it will be impossible to keep Covid off the cruise ships.  Cruise lines, like schools & universities, will have to learn to manage positive cases - because they will be inevitable.

 

The problem with cruises is that a significant percentage of their demographic falls into the high risk category for Covid.  We're not talking about a big group of 20-somethings who are more likely to be asymptomatic or get mild symptoms.  Sick people stuck on the "cruises to nowhere" back in Feb/March have sued the lines so I can only imagine the heavily revised legal disclaimers and waivers in cruise contracts going forward.  Travel insurance that covers Covid (and specifically treatment of Covid in another country) will be at a premium.

[Fido Chuckwagon]

9 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

You don't have "access to rapid testing", the cruise line invests and buys a set of rapid test machines. The 7 days is because local test centers do not have any test equipment. All they do is connect samples. They package their samples and ship them off to labs... which incur time to ship and then a backlog in processing. 

 

Other example: While some locations use hand scanner thermometers to check employees entering their buildings, causing long lines of non-socially distant people, other office buildings have invested in thermal scanning cameras where you walk through  and get scanned with little or no delay. 

 

 

If it was a simple as "the cruise line buys them" then they would be everywhere.  There are shortages of every component for those quick test machines and more importantly there are massive shortages of the precursors used to make them run.  If we had a national testing strategy and had implemented wartime measures for production and procurement of those materials and precursors than maybe this would work.  But we haven't, and it won't.  They're also not that accurate (See Governor of Ohio last week for a high profile example), but they certainly would be better than nothing.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Fido Chuckwagon

[DCGuy64]

2 hours ago, momofmab said:

Many universities here in the U.S. have set up quick testing centers to test students arriving on campus, so I believe it's doable for the cruise lines as well.  Nonetheless, I agree that without an effective vaccine that everyone is required to get, it will be impossible to keep Covid off the cruise ships.  Cruise lines, like schools & universities, will have to learn to manage positive cases - because they will be inevitable.

 

The problem with cruises is that a significant percentage of their demographic falls into the high risk category for Covid.  We're not talking about a big group of 20-somethings who are more likely to be asymptomatic or get mild symptoms.  Sick people stuck on the "cruises to nowhere" back in Feb/March have sued the lines so I can only imagine the heavily revised legal disclaimers and waivers in cruise contracts going forward.  Travel insurance that covers Covid (and specifically treatment of Covid in another country) will be at a premium.

Two things are clear to me and your post does an excellent job of highlighting them:

1. COVID will be with us for a while

2. Cruising can resume even with COVID being a factor

There is no utopia, there is no perfect world in which absolutely no one gets sick. Not on a cruise ship, not in school, not on public transport, nowhere. We will have to live with this and life has to go on. If European countries can reopen even while COVID-19 remains a factor, then so can the rest of us. That's my $.02 worth. 3 cruises booked for next year and can't wait.

[JustAPilot]

For reference, everyone arriving at the Punta Cana airport goes through the finger pr1ck Rapid test before you are let out of the terminal. Does it make you feel more secure, not for me since I still see flights arriving with vacationers testing positive after their flight. 

 

The concern is more how quickly Covid spreads in close contact and indoor spaces i.e. packing people on a cruise ship. 

Edited August 12, 2020 by JustAPilot

[boatseller]

This is current year dumb because there is no upside to testing at the pier but huge downside.  Like TSA, this will not prevent the ccv from getting on board but you'll have cruisers thinking it will.

 

One case maybe traced to the ship and...lawsuit!  One false negative...lawsuit!  One false positive...lawsuit!

 

Everyone will be like 'If we all tested negative, why do we have to wear face coverings?'.