Several Vincentian nationals, who are cruise ship employees, are awaiting repatriation to Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines from a number of cruise lines abroad.
Among those Vincentian nationals may be persons who have the COVID-19 disease. One of the unique features of the COVID-19 disease is that a person may be infected but asymptomatic.
Testing of recently-repatriated Vincentian cruise ship seafarers revealed that approximately 10% of the asymptomatic individuals were infected with COVID-19.
According to the United States Center for Disease Control, “available statistical models of the Diamond Princess outbreak suggest that 17.9% of infected persons never developed ymptoms.”2 Further, the Director of the Center for Disease Control has found:
“that cruise ship travel exacerbates the global spread of COVID-19 and that the scope of this pandemic is inherently and necessarily a problem that is international . . . in nature and has not been controlled sufficiently by the cruise ship industry… [and] that cruise ships are or may be infected or contaminated with a quarantinable communicable disease.
This reasonable belief is based on information from epidemiologic and other data regarding the nature and transmission of COVID-19 on cruise ships.”
