national

Japan to reopen to cruise ships after 2 1/2-year ban

40 Comments
By MARI YAMAGUCHI

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

40 Comments
Login to comment

Stupid decision.

Look at whats happened recently between NZ and AUS.

-11 ( +7 / -18 )

Best decision ever! Get back to normal, enough with the ludicrous Covid mania!

3 ( +12 / -9 )

Another horrible and dangerous decision.!.

-12 ( +7 / -19 )

Floating petri dishes, that's what they are! Anyone who chooses to go in one, deserve what they get...

-7 ( +12 / -19 )

Cases in Japan mainland is at another record high anyway, so any case that brought by cruise ships won't give any significant effect anyway.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/09/national/tokyo-hokkaido-covid-19-uptick-increase-cases/

-6 ( +9 / -15 )

Gambare gambare Nihon! Keep openingu up! And keep masking up -- with a high quality N95 mask -- so you all can stay open and safe!

-8 ( +1 / -9 )

after the way the J-gov handled the Diamond Princess debacle one would have to be insane to take another cruise connected to Japan in any way.

-9 ( +7 / -16 )

Diamond Cruise is back

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

A cruise liner is no different from a rush hour subway ride, except it is very clean, toilets everywhere, you can take a nap, dance, change your clothes, take a nap, drink cocktails…same risk. But you may need to pay a little more.

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

Sign up now for a floating petrie dish!

0 ( +8 / -8 )

And so based on past experience, what are the protocols when another cluster infection is confirmed on board?

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Covid Cruises back on the menu, lets go!

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Japan to reopen to cruise ships after 2 1/2-year ban

and just in time....

Cruise ship with 800 Covid-positive passengers docks in Sydney

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/13/australia/australia-covid-majestic-princess-cruise-passengers-intl-hnk/index.html

J gov, please close the border again. We just had 100,000 case a month after you opened the border to foreigners. Can you connect the dots?

-10 ( +2 / -12 )

Your quad vaccinated wearing double masks already caught Covid a couple of times everything will be fine no more need for fearmongering...

Fearmongering? Not sure if you know but covid doesnt care vax or not, mask or not... so basically they are covid cruises. Would you go on one? I doubt it.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Cruise ships are great virus incubators. Good luck Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki!

-5 ( +4 / -9 )

@JTC

Look at whats happened recently between NZ and AUS.

Just avoid Carnival cruise brand ships and you will be fine.

Most of mass COVID outbreak you hear on the news happen on Carnival cruise ships.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Book your cruise @ NorthernNOlife …/ you’re not worried …. Right ?

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Multi-day domestic cruises from Japanese ports to Japanese ports on large cruise ships such as Asuka II and Nippon Maru have continued to operate over the past two years — even during most of the domestic COVID waves.

So we could question whether cruises arriving from international locations, where recent COVID cases are arguably fewer, would increase cases in Japan.

2 ( +6 / -4 )

i saw in some comments mentions abt cruise ship near AUS shores with covid infected peopel on board.yes all vaccinated etc as requested by shipping company-but yes still infected.

JT did not bother to inform us about that at all.sure we dont need to know "everything"...right?

same thing may happen if any cruise ship will come to JP shores as no one can guarantee/no vaccines,no face maks etc/there will be zero infection possibility.

may be good for tourism and for income of some companies but will not change whole picture a lot.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

@REDwhiteblue

« J gov, please close the border again. We just had 100,000 case a month after you opened the border to foreigners. Can you connect the dots? »

Japanese have been cruising around and flying abroad on the same boats and planes for two years already during covid, back and forward, with several national and international records of weekly cases. So they can’t catch it and spread it when they are abroad, but the people from abroad can catch it and spread it while in Japan? Must be a sort of local allergy then…or a phobia…ah I think it’s called xenophobia.

-8 ( +6 / -14 )

@dbsaiya , not sure of all cruise lines, but the one just in Australia had 25% of passengers test positive. They were confined to their cabin. On arrival in port they were disembarked only after all the other passengers had left and then there were arrangements to transport them to wherever.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I find it hilarious that there are those that will blindly follow so called “experts” and the the government…. UNTIL it is something they personally don’t believe. Then suddenly the experts and government have no idea what they’re doing and that THEY know better.

I also find that the most xenophobically acting people in Japan are foreigners. They remind me of jealous pretentious Canadians who snub their noses at Mericans…

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

J gov, please close the border again. We just had 100,000 case a month after you opened the border to foreigners. Can you connect the dots?

as long as the J gov keeps it closed BOTH ways. No foreigners in? OK- NO JAPANESE ALLOWED OVERSEAS

Cool?

-7 ( +6 / -13 )

Keep them away!

-7 ( +0 / -7 )

Just on time for winter season, it is almost as if they were doing it on purpose to have one outbreak and ban the cruises again

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Everyone involved with the diamond princess decisions at the start of the pandemic should be sued to oblivion, fired, and or arrested. Locking a bunch of people in a closed space and being surprised they became infected and died in some cases and being denied beds for non Japanese was some crap that jgov gladly slipped under the rug when other countries started getting cases.

the open faced moron choices here were baffling. Then letting all of them off for public transit to go home kicking off japans first wave “which started as a mystery”

was shocked at the lack of grade school understanding for how illness spreads among “experts” here those several long weeks

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Japan to reopen to cruise ships after 2 1/2-year ban

I'll take people that never learn, for $2 Million, Alex.

I never had any interest in taking a cruise, pre covid and definitely don't have it now.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Most of mass COVID outbreak you hear on the news happen on Carnival cruise ships.

There are no "Covid outbreaks" anymore.

There were Covid outbreaks when it was a new virus. Now Covid is omnipresent and has been since mid-2021 arguably. This is due to the fact that a large percentage of people will not get tested even if they feel sick due to the likelihood of needing to miss work/class. Some may have a problem with that morally, but that's how the world works.

Kind of hard to have "outbreaks" when we are living in one giant one everywhere and all the time, and no one actually cares deep down anymore.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

There is a cruise shop docked in Australia in which all passengers and crew are fully compliant with vaccinations and boosters and they have a huge outbreak on board.

And how is this outbreak compared with those that happened before vaccination was available? Cruises are known to be facilitators of transmission, but how is the disease behaving? lots of hospitalized people and a fatality rate over 2%? Or mostly asymptomatic / mild symptomatic people?

4 ( +4 / -0 )

 lots of hospitalized people and a fatality rate over 2%? Or mostly asymptomatic / mild symptomatic people?

it makes no difference and equates to be the same in many people’s heads.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Kind of hard to have "outbreaks" when we are living in one giant one everywhere and all the time

A good word for that is "endemic". Before is was "pandemic".

A pandemic can still have waves of various sizes, like the beach has waves, but now it's OK to go surfing.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Popular cruise ship family and group illnesses:

Gastrointestinal illnesses - e.g., Norovirus, E. coli, Salmonella.

Influenza

Legionnaires’ disease (or a variant: Pontiac Fever)

Hepatitis A

COVID (new variants available in first class only)

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Have the procedures for handling COVID cases upon Cruise ships within Japanese waters been updated since the unfortunate events at the start of the Pandemic ? (And indeed, elsewhere across the World)

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites