Forty-four people on board Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas cruise that ended in Miami on Saturday tested positive for COVID-19, the cruise line said.
The cruise line also notified passengers on that sailing and on two others that a passenger who sailed on that ship during an earlier itinerary tested positive for the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
All passengers age 12 and older were required to be fully vaccinated and to test negative to board the cruise, which departed from Miami on Dec. 11. Children ineligible for the vaccine were required to test negative, too.
“We were notified by the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) that a guest on board our (December) 4th cruise tested positive and it was identified as omicron,” Lyan Sierra-Caro, spokesperson for Royal Caribbean, told USA TODAY late Saturday. “They (CDC) asked us to notify guests on the sailing, the one that ended today, and the current one.”
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In the email to the passengers who sailed on the three cruises on Symphony of the Seas, Royal Caribbean outlined what happened.
“This guest did not report symptoms to our onboard medical teams as outlined in our health protocols,” the cruise line said in a copy of the email obtained by USA TODAY. “Their post cruise test results were subsequently confirmed as the omicron variant.”
On the most recently concluded sailing, which disembarked on Saturday, 44 people out of 6,074 passengers and crew members on board Symphony of the Seas tested positive for COVID-19 – .72% of the community present on the ship.
“They were found as a result of immediately identifying close contacts after a guest tested positive,” Sierra-Caro said, noting each person was quarantined quickly. “Everyone who tested positive is asymptomatic, and we continually monitored their health. Six guests were disembarked earlier in the cruise and transported home. The remaining guests received assistance today upon our arrival.”
In the email to passengers, Royal Caribbean said that the cases on the Dec. 11th sailing were “unrelated to the omicron case from the guest who sailed on Dec. 4th.”
The cruise line advised that passengers visit a certified testing center three to five days after disembarkation per CDC guidance.
On Saturday, the CDC said in a statement that the agency was aware of the situation on Symphony of the Seas and that it was “working with RCI to gather more information about the cases and possible exposures, and RCI will be collecting specimens from the current voyage for genetic sequencing.”
Future cruises have not been impacted, according to Sierra-Caro.
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