A group of 157 people who went on a new year’s cruise were all allowed to return home after testing negative for COVID-19, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Keelung Hospital said yesterday.
The Explorer Dream cruise ship, which belongs to Hong Kong-based cruise operator Genting Hong Kong Ltd (雲頂香港), had suspended operations in the Port of Keelung in May last year after the government raised the COVID-19 alert to level 3. It resumed operations on New Year’s Eve by taking 157 people on a three-day tour around Taiwan proper.
“All 157 people aboard tested negative and are allowed to return home,” the hospital said in a statement, adding that hospital president Lin Ching-feng (林慶豐) oversaw delivery of the test samples from the ship to the hospital’s laboratory.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
Test results were produced quickly thanks to the hospital’s lab technicians, who worked overtime yesterday, it said.
The company’s policy states that people who want to go on a cruise must have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for at least 14 days and submit a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test taken at least 48 hours prior to boarding.
Before disembarking, passengers are required to take another PCR test and can only return home if they test negative.
The ship also has one doctor and five medical professionals aboard on every trip, who are dispatched from Ministry of Health and Welfare hospitals.
Although the ship has a capacity of 3,600 passengers, the company was asked by the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) to carry no more than 300 passengers per trip.
Before relaunching the three-day tour after a seven-month hiatus, the Maritime and Port Bureau conducted a drill on Monday last week, in which onboard personnel were asked to respond if one of the passengers reported symptoms of COVID-19.
Chang Te-yi (張德義), director of the bureau’s northern maritime affairs center, said that if a passenger tests positive for COVID-19 before disembarking, they must be taken to a hospital immediately.
The rest of the passengers must remain on board until CECC officials finish a contact tracing investigation, Chang said.
Travelers with a medium to high risk of contracting the disease would be asked to quarantine in the cruise ship’s isolation chambers and in quarantine hotels, while those with no risk of contracting the disease would be permitted to return home, he said.
Lion Travel Service Co (雄獅旅行社) general manager Andy Yu (游國珍) said the firm hoped the CECC would lower the COVID-19 alert level after the Lunar New Year holiday and relax disease prevention requirements for cruise ship travelers.
“In Taiwan, only cruise ship passengers are required to take PCR tests before boarding and before disembarking a ship, and that costs additional time and money. Meanwhile, there is a cap on the number of passengers a cruise ship can carry,” he said.
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