Due to the deteriorating COVID-19 pandemic situation in India, Royal Caribbean Cruises have been compelled to suspend the recruitment of Indian crew members temporarily. In a letter that was obtained by Crew Cruise, the parent company of Royal Caribbean Cruises, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity International communicated recent hires that it would not be able to assign them to a ship due “various reasons and related to recently announced travel restrictions and complexities with crew movement to and from India”.
India has been dramatically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic since its outbreak in 2020, suffering the global highest infections in a single day for a country. Detected cases have spiked as high as 352,991 in 24 hours, and this record has been broken repeatedly.
The effect of the pandemic is overwhelming the country’s medical system, seeing other countries of the world pledging their support to the world’s most second-most populous nation that is in dire need of oxygen and medical supplies.
The Indian government has mobilized the military to support overwhelmed civilian hospitals, releasing reserves of medical oxygen for the nation’s armed forces and assigning its military medical officers to offer assistance to civilian health workers, including doctors and nurses.
The laboratories in India are also challenged by the crisis, as a massive backlog of tests has created delays in getting results, according to a report by the BBC.
This is implicated in the difficulty of repatriating Indian-based crew for the Royal Caribbean, given that most countries request COVID test results that are not more than 48 hours old. Unsurprisingly, too, many countries have begun placing an entry ban on all travellers from India.
The Indian crew in the Caribbean for Adventure of the Seas’ restart have been advised to go into quarantine.
And it is for these reasons that the Royal Caribbean is unable to fly Indian crew from their hometowns to the point where the cruise line’s ships would sail back for service to the UK, Mediterranean and Caribbean.
“It’s always unfortunate when we must cancel assignments, but we believe this is a prudent decision at this time,” the cruise line said in its letter. “We know how much our crew look forward to returning to work after waiting for so long. We also understand how tough it can be to have to make last-minute travel changes.”
“It’s not the way that we want to operate, but it is the reality of the quick changes we need to make based on different reasons that are often unplanned and beyond our direct control,” the letter added.
Royal Caribbean noted in the letter that notifications would be sent to Indian crew members currently holding fort at hotels waiting to join a ship or are now en route. Accommodation
