The Celebrity Apex in August 2020.
Photo:
Romain Boulanger / Zuma Press
By
June 11, 2021 12:27 p.m. ET
Just when you think you’ve seen the back, the Covid-19 pandemic has a way to linger in the cabin.
So it was for Colleen McDaniel, editor-in-chief of the cruise review site Cruise Critic, who wrote about her excitement on Tuesday on board the Celebrity Millennium, which sails in the Caribbean exclusively with fully vaccinated passengers. “After all, 15 months without a cruise feels like a lifetime if it’s the form of travel you’re most passionate about,” she wrote. “Passengers, crew – everyone on board – felt the importance of meaningful sailing.”
But on Thursday, two guests on board the Millennium tested positive for Covid-19.
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said in a statement. The company said that the passengers were asymptomatic and isolated.
For Ms. McDaniel, the celebration became an opportunity for real journalism. In one Follow-up FridayShe told Cruise Critic readers how it’s been on board since the positive tests: crew members who had close contact with the couple were tested immediately and came back negative. Closed circuit footage was used to conduct contact tracing to determine who was within two meters of them for 15 minutes. The first announcement of positive tests, she said, “didn’t send waves of panic from passengers on board.”
Vaccines are not 100% effective, so we may all have to live with the risk of Covid for a while. It doesn’t seem to have cramped anyone at the Millennium: Ms. McDaniel reports that most of the guests continued to go to shows, fetch drinks and go to the casino.
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