COVID-19 pandemic on cruise ships

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Parts of this article (those related to crew strandings, case numbers) need to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2021)

Early in 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease spread to a number of cruise ships, with the nature of such ships – including crowded semi-enclosed areas, increased exposure to new environments, and limited medical resources – contributing to the heightened risk and rapid spread of the disease.^[1]

The British-registered Diamond Princess was the first cruise ship to have a major outbreak on board, with the ship quarantined at Yokohama from 4 February 2020 for about a month. Of 3711 passengers and crew, around 700 people became infected and 9 people died.^[2][3]

Governments and ports responded by preventing many cruise ships from docking and advising people to avoid travelling on cruise ships. Many cruise lines suspended their operations to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.

By June 2020, over 40 cruise ships had had confirmed positive cases of coronavirus on board. The last cruise ship with passengers aboard during the first wave of the pandemic, Artania, docked at its home port with its last eight passengers on 8 June 2020.^{[a][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][excessive citations]} In addition, over 40,000 crew members still remained on cruise ships, some in isolation, in mid-June 2020.^[12] Many could not be repatriated because cruise lines refused to cover the cost,^[13][14] and because countries had different and changing rules. The condition was stressful to many of those stranded;^[15] multiple suicides were reported.^[16]

Domestic UK cruises, confined to ports of call in the British Isles, began to resume in May 2021.^[17] United States cruises restarted in June 2021.^[18]

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