Vaccines, Masks and Testing: What Cruise Lines Require Now 2022

Table Of Content

• Common Health Concerns During Cruise Travel and what You Can Do to Prevent Illness
• Celebrity Cruises
• Cruises
• These Cruises Will Require Guests to Have COVID Vaccinations
• Updated Vaccine and Testing Requirements for All Major Cruise Lines
• Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises
• When you travel with us, we've got you covered

Vaccination will also be required by U.S. river cruise company American Queen Steamboat Company and its sister cruise brand Victory Cruise Lines, the latter of which operates cruises to Canada, the Great Lakes, New England, and Alaska. As a member of the Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. family, Oceania will be requiring that adult passengers and crew be fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to boarding as well. American Queen Voyages' guests and crew are all required to be fully vaccinated. Testing is not required by the line but might be necessary based on local regulations, which with passengers must comply. Star Clippers has eliminated all vaccine checks and testing protocols for all passengers on all voyages.

Common Health Concerns During Cruise Travel and what You Can Do to Prevent Illness

Local regulations may have booster requirements to enter certain countries – make sure to check Travel Requirements by Country to understand country specific requirements. With Sail Safe, our industry leading Health & Safety Program, we will continue to put our guests and our crew members first by keeping everyone safe and healthy on board our ships and in the communities we visit. In addition to requiring our crew to be up-to-date with all their vaccinations, we will continue to evolve our already robust science-backed program to broaden our cleaning, sanitation and air filtration technologies across our fleet.

Celebrity Cruises

For cruises with luxury line Seabourn, there are no line-enforced regulations for vaccination or testing unless required by local authorities in the countries on which its vessels call. To see if your booked sailing requires either of these, check out the line's search tool. Following an industry-wide rollback of protocols, Princess passengers no longer have to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccine, nor proof of a negative test result, unless either is required by local regulations. Passengers are responsible for knowing the requirements for the places their ships will visit.

Cruises

On Royal Caribbean ships, vaccinated passengers may remove their face coverings in onboard venues reserved exclusively for vaccinated guests. But what you can do in the port varies, especially if any members of your group aren’t vaccinated. At least one — San Juan, Puerto Rico — requires unvaccinated people to stay on the ship.

‘Aren’t needed’: Covid measures scrapped - news.com.au

‘Aren’t needed’: Covid measures scrapped.

Posted: Mon, 28 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Carnival Cruise Line is joining Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line in dropping its COVID-19 vaccine requirement. All onboard venues and activities will be available unless staffing or other challenges onboard prevent normal operations. If you have simply decided not to get the vaccine at this time, you are ineligible to request a vaccine exemption to go on a cruise. For the most part, travelers will get a credit for a future cruise if they are able to change their plans. “People on a large ship, all together, at the same time, all the time — you couldn’t ask for a better incubator for infection,” Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-diseases expert, said in February 2020. Bundle-up season has arrived in much of the country, which means many travelers are thinking about where they can go to get warm.

You may also want to consider a Cancel for Any Reason add-on that will reimburse a percentage of your travel expenses if you decide not to sail for a typically uncovered reason (such as you simply don’t feel safe). Norwegian Cruise Line and Holland America, on the other hand, are requiring 100 percent of passengers to be vaccinated, and are currently sailing with no kids under the age of 12. While many cruise lines have flexible cancellation or rescheduling policies, some are more forgiving than others.

Updated Vaccine and Testing Requirements for All Major Cruise Lines

Like Carnival, guests taking a Princess Cruise sailing under 16 nights long will only need to provide proof of full vaccination, while unvaccinated guests are required to test and upload proof of their result prior to embarkation. Carnival Cruise Line amended its requirements for a second time on August 24, going into effect for sailings beginning on September 6. Fully vaccinated guests on cruises 16 nights or less no longer need to test, while unvaccinated guests over the age of five can cruise as long as they provide a recent negative COVID-19 test result.

In addition, certain activities, shows, and seating areas will be reserved for vaccinated passengers. All crew and guests older than 18 aboard the Celebrity Apex will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Those under the age of 18 must provide proof of negative COVID-19 PCR test results to board.

Proof of vaccination must be provided at arrival at the cruise terminal, and P&O will detail what forms to provide closer to departure. On April 1, we reported that a letter had been sent to all crew members and officers of Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, and Regent Seven Seas. The crew will have to get one of the approved vaccines in their home country before even leaving for their ship. Crew members will not need to be vaccinated, but Crystal has already said that once possible, this will change.

Crystal passengers will need to fill out an online form acknowledging the vaccine requirement before finalizing their cruise booking. They can find out all the details about the new policy on the Crystal website. Crystal’s decision was driven in part by a recent Cruise Critic survey of nearly 3,000 people, 80 percent of whom said they would cruise if a vaccine were required. Windstar and Lindblad are among the latest to join a growing list of cruise lines that began mandating COVID vaccines as early as February, just on the heels of the vaccine rollout in the United States.

If you’re planning on sailing with Viking anytime soon, you’d better track down that COVID-19 vaccine certificate. If you traveled and feel sick, particularly if you have a fever, talk to a healthcare provider and tell them about your travel. Duffy added that Carnival is in the process of updating its website, communications and internal processes, and sharing more details with passengers and travel agents to reflect the new policies. But like the latter lines, it'll still make you show proof of one for some sailings.

Hurtigruten Expeditions requires travelers who are eligible for vaccines to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as defined by the country of embarkation. Ponant's website simply reads, "when you visit certain destinations, vaccines can be recommended," but they are not required by the line. Ponant also says it will alert passengers to their specific requirements after they have booked a voyage. Neither vaccines nor pre-cruise testing is required for Carnival sailings. However, the line recommends that anyone 5 years or older be up to date on their shots and carry proof.

Guests will have to show that their COVID vaccines were completed at least 14 days prior to embarkation date; they will also have to provide negative COVID-19 test results. Celebrity will also return to the Caribbean on June 5, 2021, with cruises on the 2,218-passenger Celebrity Millennium. On those sailings, adult passengers and crew sailing the seven-night cruises out of St. Maarten will all need to be vaccinated. Children under the age of 18 will need to present a negative COVID-19 test result procured within 72 hours of embarkation. Viking Cruises became the first cruise line to do away with pre-embarkation testing measures for fully vaccinated travelers in destinations where testing isn't required for cruise or river ships.

If being fully vaccinated is required, that means having received the original series of vaccines at least 14 days prior to your cruise, or the original series plus a booster shot or shots. The cruise line requires that all guests must be fully vaccinated at least 14 days before departure. This does mean that guests will need to have the second dose before taking a cruise.

Before cruising shut down in March 2020 — and after, as ships with ill passengers desperately tried to return to land — the industry dealt with major outbreaks on several ships. Carnival Cruise Line, for example, has 13 ships sailing in the United States now, but it plans to add another four by the end of 2021. Princess Cruises is operating three ships in the United States, a number that will jump to eight by year’s end. Royal Caribbean International says its entire 26-ship fleet will be back in service by spring of 2022. Disney Cruise Line updated its immunization policy for guests on Wednesday, requiring all children over the age of 5 to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. Some lines, however, may still require one or more protocols to be adhered to, either on a voyage-by-voyage basis or on a destination-basis.

Passengers who have their boosters are considered "up to date" rather than merely "fully vaccinated." On American Queen Voyages’ river, ocean, Great Lakes, and expedition ships, there are no longer any precruise testing or vaccinations required. Face coverings are optional, though masks may be required of any passengers showing symptoms. Inspired Diagnostics is a subsidiary of Inspire Health Alliance, a leader in best-in-class health services. Carnival, Disney, MSC Cruises, and Royal Caribbean all require travel parties with unvaccinated cruisers to book tours through the cruise line if guests wish to debark the ship.