How You Can Stay Healthy While at Sea

In the wake of the pandemic, cruise ships have upgraded their health and safety systems, from hand sanitizers throughout the ship to medical-grade air filters in the ventilation systems to robots that shoot ultraviolet rays to kill bacteria.

You’ll no longer need to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to board many ships, though unvaccinated travelers are encouraged to provide a negative COVID test result. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which shut down cruising in North America from March 2020 to June 2021, ended its intense monitoring of the industry in July 2022, saying cruise passengers “can make their own risk assessment when choosing to cruise, much like they do in other settings.”

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Here’s what to expect:

• Cruise ship medical centers have been upgraded with equipment to test for COVID-19, and medical teams have added personnel to better treat anyone who falls ill, even severely ill.
  
• When a passenger tests positive, contact tracing commences. On some ships, security cameras will use facial recognition to aid in this task; on the big ships with thousands of passengers, you may be traced via an app on your smartphone or a smart wristband provided at check-in.
  
• Passengers who get sick will be confined to their cabins or cabins set aside for quarantine purposes. Meals will be delivered to those rooms.
  
• Wearing a mask is a personal choice.
  

Where does all this leave older travelers considering getting on a ship? Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, says passengers should realize they are going into an “increased risk situation,” with the social atmosphere comparable to attending a wedding every night.

“You just have to assume you are going to be interacting with people who are infectious,” he says. “I can't recommend strongly enough that you should be vaccinated and updated with all your boosters to maximize protection.”

Russo adds that packing the antiviral Paxlovid, which needs to be taken within the first few days of becoming ill, is also a good practice.