Another cruise ship gets hit with COVID outbreak

MSC Grandiosa disembarks infected guests and continues voyage to Rome

One of the largest cruise ships operating in the Mediterranean has become the latest to be hit by a Covid outbreak amid the current global surge in virus cases.

All of the almost hundred passengers are asymptomatic, and none have been transported to the hospital. According to the protocol, they were all isolated waiting to disembark and reach their homes.

MSC Cruises confirmed 45 Covid positive passengers disembarked from its MSC Grandiosa vessel in the Italian port of Genoa on Monday — fewer than 1% of those on board. All the others will disembark in the ports of Rome-Civitavecchia and Palermo, as required by security protocols.

The vessel was ferrying 4,813 passengers and crew members on a round trip from Civitavecchia-Rome, with scheduled stop offs in Malta and Barcelona over the New Year.

All MSC Cruises crew members and passengers over the age of 12 are required to be fully vaccinated, while all travelers aged 2 and over must submit a predeparture negative test.

In a statement MSC Cruises denied Italian media reports of a much higher number of Covid positive cases on board. The cruise line said the identification and removal of the sick passengers demonstrated its health and safety protocol — which also includes the wearing of face masks in indoor public areas — was working.

MSC Cruises said positive passengers and their close contacts were “immediately isolated in cabins with balconies.”

“In line with the protocol, we organize transportation back home, all done in alignment with the relevant health and other authorities,” said MSC Cruises’ statement.

“During the frequent checks managed by the company, provided for as part of the rigorous ‘Safety and Health Protocol’ of MSC Cruises, it emerged, also due to the significant worsening of the pandemic situation on land, the positivity to Covid of some passengers embarked on Grandiosa. Most of them are asymptomatic”.

“MSC has safely transported over one million passengers from the restart of the cruises (August 2020) to today. On board, safety protocols are applied that are not matched by any other sector of tourism and hospitality, and which allow to identify cases of positive people who on land would probably never have been identified and who represent, in any case, a percentage significantly lower than in the cases of contagion developed on the ground”.

Crew members on board MSC Grandiosa were said to have been tested every two days, while passengers were tested at the beginning and in the middle of the voyage. Passengers were also set to be tested at the journey’s end.

The MSC Grandiosa continued its voyage following the disembarkation, and was set to return to Rome Tuesday.

Back in Summer 2020, MSC Grandiosa was the first cruise ship to return to the Mediterranean following the global shut down of the multi billion-dollar cruise industry in Spring 2020.