Third Royal Caribbean cruise ship hit with COVID-19 outbreak

Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas holiday voyage from Port Canaveral went awry for many passengers, after they or their family members tested positive for COVID-19.

The cruise ship left on Dec. 26 and stopped in Cozumel, Mexico; Roatan, Honduras; Costa Maya, Mexico; and CocoCay, Royal Caribbean’s private island in the Bahamas, and returned to FloridaJan. 2.

Since Dec. 18, Harmony of the Seas, which has room for 6,780 passengers, is at least the fifth ship to sail in and out of Florida ports and have a coronavirus outbreak on board. And it’s the third Royal Caribbean ship to experience COVID-19 infections on board while sailing from this state during that period. The cruise line’s Symphony of the Seas had at least 48 coronavirus cases and the Oasis of the Seas had 55.

The Miami Herald spoke with four groups of passengers who had at least one person in their party test positive for COVID-19 while sailing on that Harmony of the Seas’ holiday voyage. Royal Caribbean didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment about the infections on that voyage, including the number of passengers and crew members infected.

Carnival Freedom was recently denied entry to the islands of Aruba and Bonaire due to COVID-19 cases, but the cruise operator Carnival Cruise Line would not comment on the number of infected people on board. The Norwegian Pearl turned around on the second day of an 11-day cruise around the Caribbean and Wednesday returned to PortMiami.

With the rapid spread of the omicron variant, accompanied by a worrying number of COVID-19 cases among fully vaccinated people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Dec. 30 advised against cruising even for those inoculated. The CDC reported there were 5,013 confirmed COVID-19 cases on cruise ships between Dec. 15 and 29, compared to just 162 cases in the two weeks prior, Nov. 30 to Dec. 14.

According to the CDC’s database for COVID-19 on cruise ships as of Wednesday, all 92 cruise ships currently sailing in U.S. waters had people on board infected by COVID-19.

Seasonne Rose, 42, is an actor who lives in Austin, Texas, and was aboard Harmony of the Seas with her 7-year-old daughter, who tested positive on Dec. 31 after running a fever the day before. When her daughter tested positive, Rose asked for a test herself but said she was never given one. She said the lack of information from Royal Caribbean was frustrating.

“We understood there could be COVID-19 on board ... butit was like dealing with the wild wild west from the moment you test positive,” Rose said. “They wouldn’t tell us what was going on. They’re not being transparent with passengers. ... There’s a false sense of security.”

Harmony of the Seas’ passengers told the Miami Herald the ship’s captain never specified how many COVID-19 cases there were among passengers or crew.

On the same holiday cruise, Michael Ratliff, 33, of Charleston, South Carolina, said his 4-year-old daughter tested positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 31.

“It was so frustrating,” Ratliff said. “My daughter had tested positive, we were locked off in a hallway, and we just wanted to know what the situation was, but they wouldn’t tell anyone anything about what was going on.”

When a reporter asked Royal Caribbean officials about the frustration among Harmony of the Seas’ passengers over not being informed about COVID-19 infections on the ship, they declined to comment.

Brian Salerno, senior vice president of maritime policy at Cruise Lines International Association, the cruise industry’s largest trade group, said that association and CDC guidelines say that cruise lines need to inform passengers when there are coronavirus cases confirmed on board.

“There is an expectation that if there are cases on board that other passengers are made aware of that. That’s the operating guideline,” Salerno said, explaining that he didn’t know why cruise lines weren’t divulging numbers of COVID-19 cases on board.

“I don’t know why that is, I think they have a good story to tell in terms of effectiveness of protocols. ... the (public safety) measures have been working really well overall, despite that we have a unique challenge with omicron.”

But as the omicron variant spreads rapidly throughout the world, some cruise fans may start to reconsider their cruising plans.

“I love cruising,” Rose said. “I have several cruises booked on Royal Caribbean this year, but something’s gotta change. I’m not going back on a cruise ship until this disaster is over.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story and a headline misidentified the Florida port where Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas sailed from. It departed and returned to Port Canaveral.

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