NCLH & Chairman of SailSAFE Program Provide Pandemic Update

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings CEO Frank Del Rio and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Former Commissioner of the FDA and Chairman of the SailSAFE Global Health & Wellness Council, provided an update on the pandemic as well as professional opinion on the safety of cruising in a virtual meeting on January 13 for travel advisors and other invested members of the cruise community.

Narrated by Andrea DeMarco, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer for Regent Seven Seas Cruises, the talk answered listeners' most important questions, such as when Dr. Gottlieb believed the pandemic might wane, what the next six to nine months would look like and the safety of cruising.

Frank Del Rio also commented on the latest cruise news in relation to the new variant, including the several breakouts of Omicron that have occurred on NCLH's ships, as well as others across the industry.

"With the rapid spread of Omicron across the globe, our industry has once again gotten a lot of press, most of it negative press," he begins. "And all of it has been biased to some degree, skewed, taking advantage of the fact that our industry offers robust testing, that we track cases, and that we diligently report them to the CDC and to other public health administrations. It's something that no other industry is required to do…"

The recent outbreaks had gained global media attention. Several smaller cruise lines have begun mandating boosters for all guests in order to help mitigate the spread of the variant, while larger ones, including NCL, canceled a few of their sailings in response.

NCL, in particular, canceled some of its ships' sailings through late April, causing many to speculate on the future of the industry, though Del Rio stated during the update today that he expects NCL's entire fleet to be sailing by late spring.

Just yesterday, January 13, the CDC announced it will not extend the Conditional Sail Order past its end date of January 15, choosing instead to implement a voluntary program of reporting and pandemic protocols that it believes all cruise lines will take part in.

Dr. Gottlieb is optimistic about the future of the industry, as well as the future end to the pandemic, citing lowering case counts in parts of the U.S. like the East and West Coasts to be good signs that within the next few weeks, the highest surge the country has seen since the pandemic began should begin to wane as more and more people achieve immunity from the Omicron variant.

"Pandemics don't last forever. If you look historically at past pandemics, they've lasted anywhere from two to five years. We're now three years into this…given the fact that this has spread more quickly around the world…because of modern travel and because we've been able to hasten the arrival of immunity in the population through vaccines, you would expect that this would be the final year of the pandemic," said Dr. Gottlieb.

While he doesn't negate the possibility of another new variant this year, he is skeptical of a variant creating another record-breaking wave of infections like Omicron or Delta, one that is highly transmissible and can break through the barriers of immunity much of the world has already reached from the previous waves.

"I feel very confident that there's going to be low prevalence this summer, that I'm going to be back traveling, back going to meetings in person," he said.

So while there might be some uneasiness surrounding cruising right now, with people choosing to cancel or reschedule their cruises for a later date, overall the future continues to look bright for NCLH and all other cruise lines.

As for Dr. Gottlieb, he and his family are taking a cruise this summer.

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