The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released their color-coded status update for individual cruise ships operating within their jurisdiction for the week of September 21, 2020 and the Disney Wonder remains in a Green status allowing for commercial travel of crew. Overall, nothing much has changed which seems to be the norm these last few weeks.

As of September 22th, the Disney Wonder remains green with with a complete and accurate No Sail Order response plan per the CDC.

CDC’s Green Ship Criteria

• No confirmed cases of COVID-19 or COVID-like illness for 28 days, as determined by a qualified medical professional.
• If the ship received ship-to-ship transfers within the past 28 days, crew must have come from a ship that had no confirmed COVID-19 or COVID-like illness within the 28 days before the transfer occurred.
• If land-based crew embarked, they were immediately quarantined for 14 days upon embarking the ship.

Note: To maintain Green status, ships must submit a weekly EDC form to CDC. Failure to submit, changes ship status to Red. Green ship status means that CDC believes the ship is currently unaffected by COVID-19 based on information provided by the cruise ship operator.

This week, 3 new ships (shown in bold below) moved into a Green status allowing for commercial crew travel through the CDC process. However, there are 2 ships that dropped from a green status and are noted below.

Cruise Ships with Green Status

• Grand Celebration
• Disney Wonder
• MSC Armonia
• MSC Meraviglia
• MSC Preziosa
• MSC Seaside
• Norwegian Jewel
• Pride of America
• Oceania Regatta
• Celebrity Eclipse
• Celebrity Edge
• Celebrity Equinox
• Celebrity Millennium
• Celebrity Reflection
• Celebrity Silhouette
• Celebrity Summit
• Adventure of the Seas dropped to Yellow
• Brilliance of the Seas
• Enchantment of the Seas
• Freedom of the Seas
• Grandeur of the Seas
• Harmony of the Seas
• Independence of the Seas
• Liberty of the Seas
• Navigator of the Seas
• Oasis of the Seas
• Rhapsody of the Seas
• Serenade of the Seas dropped to Red after earning green status last week
• Symphony of the Seas
• Vision of the Seas

At this time, the Disney Magic, Disney Dream, and Disney Fantasy are in Europe and, therefore, do not fall under U.S. CDC jurisdiction thus not included.

For additional details, please see our previous article when the CDC introduced the color-coded rating for cruise ships. You can view the status, updated each Monday, for all cruise ships currently operating in U.S. waters, or seeking to operate in U.S. waters over on the CDC’s website.

It is very important to note, meeting the CDC’s criteria does not mean a cruise ship can resume passenger service. At this time, the CDC does not have enough information to say when it will be safe to resume passenger sailings. According to the CDC, cruise lines may need to establish additional safety measures before sailing with passengers is permitted to resume. CDC will continue to evaluate and update its recommendations as the situation evolves. The No Sail Order is set to expire in just over 1 week and we anticipate an update from the CDC on the status before it expires.

Disney Cruise Line Crew Repatriation Still No Recent Update

To date, there have been 1,346 Disney Cruise Line crew members repatriated through CDC approved disembarkations – this does NOT include those repatriated via stops through the Caribbean. The CDC last updated the crew disembarkation numbers on August 10th. The graphic below will no longer be updated unless the CDC resumes updating the data set.

Due to the CDC’s constraints limiting commercial travel, the ships had been sailing to various ports in the Caribbean and the Magic to Europe to drop off crew members. The Disney Wonder remains in the vicinity of Port Canaveral while the Magic and Fantasy are in Europe with the Dream nearing her arrival in France. Thankfully, other countries continue to help crew members return home, especially considering they have been quarantined on the ships for over 4 months.

CDC COVID-19 Cruise Ship Public Comment Update

On July 21, 2020, the CDC issued a request for Information Related to Cruise Ship Planning and Resumption of Passenger Operations. The CDC is invited the public to comment on specific questions regarding interventions, methods, protocols, and procedures for protecting the public’s health as well as the health of prospective passengers, crew members, and industry-related service providers. This information may be used to inform future public health guidance and preventative measures relating to travel on cruise ships. The comment period ended on September 21, 2020, but there are still comments submitted before the deadline being approved and posted as of today.

As you know by now, I’ve spent way too much time over the last few weeks attempting to summarize the public comments. To date, there are about 5670 comments posted and I reviewed nearly 60% of them. This remains a work in progress and it was my hope to present a summary of the comments at some point, but it will take some time as there were 12,834 total comments submitted. The CDC will review all submissions, however they may choose to redact, or withhold, certain submissions (or portions thereof). There were nearly 2100 comments posted in the last 72 hours.

Until then, you can see all current public comments submitted on our CDC COVID-19 Cruise Ship Public Comments page which also has the running summary of our category findings.