Covid-19: Colombia refuses to let cruise tourists off board due to infections

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The health authorities of Cartagena de Indias denied Wednesday the disembarkation of passengers and crew members who arrived in this city on the Seven Seas Mariner cruise ship after the captain reported seven positive cases of Covid-19.

The director of Cartagena’s District Administrative Department of Health (DADIS) of Johana Bueno said that the tourist boat that arrived this morning to Cartagena de Indias was received by the competent authorities to review the situation.

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The official explained that “an epidemiological risk assessment has been carried out and it has been decided that neither crew members nor passengers who are on board this vessel should disembark.”

The captain of the Regent Seven Seas Cruises cruise ship, with a capacity for 769 passengers and 445 crew members, had reported since last Tuesday that it was sailing with six of its crew members and one passenger positive for Covid-19.

Bueno said that upon learning the information, “all measures were taken, the information was verified, the close contacts were identified, and specific instructions were given, including the quarantine of the crew on the ship and the isolation of the positive case and its close contacts”.

The ship, which covers the route Miami, Key West, Cartagena de Indias, Panama, remains docked in one of the positions of the cruise port of the Port Society and is expected to sail this Wednesday.

Last August 24 and after being closed for 17 months due to the pandemic, the port of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia’s leading tourist destination, received the cruise ship Star Breeze of the Windstar Cruise line with 87 tourists on board.

The ship, coming from Curaçao, docked at its cruise terminal, where the city authorities received it under strict sanitary measures. It remained for 15 hours before setting sail for neighboring Panama.

This week, Health Minister Fernando Ruiz said that three cases of the Omicron variant had been detected, two of them in Cartagena de Indias and another in Santa Marta, both cities with tourist ports.

Cartagena de Indias is one of the few ports in Latin America and the Caribbean that operates practically all year round due to its tropical climate and strategic location.

Between November and January, the arrival of passengers increases, mainly from Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, and the United States.

Colombian health authorities reported yesterday that 129,534 people have lost their lives to the coronavirus and that 5,110,788 have been infected.

OMICRON FEAR JUSTIFIED?

Recent official South African medical reports and countrywide COVID data have indicated that since early November, when Omicron was first detected, COVID cases substantially increased.

However, most patients had, at worst, mild symptoms, and cases are now in steep decline. These observations substantially differ from the previous waves, including those attributed to the delta variant.