Around Iceland, halfway through one of Viking’s first cruises back in operation, a passenger tested positive for COVID-19. Local authorities prohibited most of the sailing’s remaining shore excursions.
In fact, I was onboard and experienced it all firsthand.
To meet the ship upon its return to the Reykjavik homeport was Dr. Raquel Bono, the line’s chief health officer, who sat down with me to discuss what she and her medical team are doing to deal with any future flare-ups and resulting travel interruptions.
What conversations have you been having with the local authorities in Iceland to avoid future interruptions?
In my military background, we have a saying that ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy.’ We did as much planning as we could to anticipate everything while trying to restart operations during the pandemic. I like to remind people that nobody has ever done this. I think that we've done as much as we can to warn everybody and get them as prepared as possible.
So, the conversations I’m having with the Icelandic health authorities are, ‘Here are our protocols. What are your protocols?’ At the end of the day we want the same thing [that Iceland wants.] We want the safest [travel] for the crew, our guests and the local communities that are hosting us.
If there’s a positive COVID-19 case in the future, are there protocols in place to avoid missing any ports?
Part of my perspective on this is that we should prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. So, I expect, especially as we're cruising during this pandemic, we are always going to have some type of issue with COVID-19 that we’re going to need to address.
Part of my perspective on this is that we should prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.
Part of the conversation I’ve been having with the Icelandic officials is developing the confidence in our protocols, and we’re starting to see [results] already. The proof of that is they allowed us to continue to cruise once we were able to show that we can isolate and quarantine safely.
How will this event affect Viking’s health protocols moving forward?
Things are always an evolution, and what we're trying to do is learn as much as we can. As a matter of fact, Iceland has some really nice criteria they use for close contacts, and I'm actually going to start incorporating some of that into our protocols, just to give us a higher level of safety.
I think at the same time, Iceland has looked at our protocols. I've been very transparent. I've given them our COVID-19 operations manual. And what they’ve realized in looking at our protocols is that we already have a high degree of accordance between what they're trying to do and what we're doing. So, it's really easy to complement each other in this case.
What are some of the things that you're modifying, such as testing, etc.?
The testing is going to remain. That is our foundation, so testing at embarkation and testing every day [will stay].
Is there a specific benchmark that has to be met before Viking can start relaxing some of its strictest measures, including the use of face coverings?
We're always looking at the degree of [viral] activity that's happening in different countries, and the communities we’re visiting. That's something that’s extremely important. A lot of governments and public health authorities in those areas are going to influence and inform how we come to those decisions.
Some of the things that we're going to be contending with for some time are the airlines, the different modes of transportation, and what [safety measures] they’re putting in place. I think that the level of activity of the disease, the vaccination rates, and what's happening with the different variants and overall expression of the coronavirus [will impact our decisions].
So, no particular timeline?
We've kind of set for ourselves an internal target of looking at once September [comes] to say, “Okay, how do we look? Are we in a position that we can take another step forward?” But we're always evaluating and seeing what we need to modify and how much further we can advance.
Some lines are already saying that masks are not required on fully vaccinated cruises. How does Viking fit in?
I try not to compare ourselves too much, but what I do try to look at is what is actually happening with the virus.
One of the things I'm paying attention to are the different variants. The delta variant has gotten a lot of press. We know it's more transmissible, and we also know the vaccines are not 100% [effective]. I'm looking to see how that's playing out.
And the other piece is we don't know how well the vaccines perform at six, eight, nine, or 12 months out. So, this is an ongoing evaluation, and that's what I'm going to be looking at.
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