Everyone give a warm "welcome back!" to the Royal Caribbean cruise line, which is back in operation after a year of pandemic shutdown and already up to some of its old tricks.
Stop us if you've heard this one before, but that trick is taking a tropical vacation and turning it into a potential superspreader event: WIC News reports that two guests on the company's first cruise have already tested positive for the coronavirus and are now in quarantine aboard the lavish Celebrity Millennium cruise ship.
The swank ship embarked on its journey last week after Royal Caribbean purportedly demonstrated adherence to new CDC guidelines that require full COVID-19 vaccinations for the entire staff and all guests over the age of 16. The company also told WIC News that it's now conducting contact tracing to figure out who the two passengers interacted with and testing them.
Because infection rates among the vaccinated are so low, the coronavirus cases raise questions about whether Royal Caribbean actually enforced all of those guidelines or whether the passengers faked their vaccination cards — but for now, that's pure speculatation.
Assuming that the infected passengers really are vaccinated, however, this outbreak hopefully won't be nearly as severe as the horror stories that emerged from cruise ships during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. The two passengers who tested positive are asymptomatic, according to WIC News, so there's a chance that the staff nipped the outbreak in the bud and the rest of the trip can continue as planned.
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READ MORE: Two tests COVID-19 positive on a Royal Caribbean cruise-ship [WIC News]
