The Celebrity Edge will sail from Port Everglades this Saturday, with 1,100 passengers and 100% of the crew Vaccinated with Capt. Kate McCue in command.
The Celebrity Edge , owned by Celebrity Cruises, which will set sail this Saturday from Port Everglades, in South Florida, will be the first cruise with passengers to travel from a United States port after a year of suspension by the measures prevention of Covid-19.
The crew is 100% vaccinated and, among the passengers, only two adults and 24 children under 16 have not received immunization, said the cruise company, which received the OK from the health authorities for this trip.
“We’ve waited so long for this moment, and it’s here and it’s magnificent,” Royal Caribbean CEO Richard Fain said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
According to the manager, the Celebrity Edge, “sister ship” of the Celebrity Equinox that will sail through the Caribbean from July 25, will depart on Saturday from Port Everglades, in Fort Lauderdale, with almost 1,100 passengers, or what is the same, the 36% of its capacity, to allow social distancing.
In addition, the ship has two doctors and three nurses on board. It also has additional beds and fans in the intensive care unit.
According to the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cruise ships can avoid test trips if 98% of the crew and 95% of the travelers are vaccinated against COVID-19.
“We want them to start slowly as we have not been operating for 15 months. Like anything else, we want to start slowly and build, give people the opportunity to practice, give them the opportunity to return to the experience”, Fain said.
The Celebrity Edge will set sail this Saturday under the leadership of Capt. Kate McCue, who in 2015 became the first American woman to captain a cruise ship, and will go on a seven-night cruise through the Caribbean.
Since the end of last May, Celebrity Cruises had announced on Twitter that this Saturday morning departure would make “history.”
In early June, Judge Stephen Merryday, of the United States Court for the Middle District of Florida, based in Tampa (on the west coast of Florida), approved a petition filed by the state of Florida in a lawsuit against the government CDC that still continues open.
The judge decided that as of July 18, the CDC guidelines for cruises departing from Florida will not be a rule but a recommendation.
The judge’s decision marks a victory for Florida Governor Ron Desantis, who said “the CDC has been wrong all along and they knew it.”
DeSantis asked the judge to act against the “conditional navigation order” issued by the CDC in October, which contains a series of measures so that shipping companies can resume their operations with cruise ships from US ports.
According to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), which represents 95% of the companies with oceanic cruises, between March and September 2020 these companies had global losses of 77,000 million dollars, 23,000 million in salaries and 518,000 jobs.
