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© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Japan to reopen to cruise ships after 2 1/2-year ban
By MARI YAMAGUCHI TOKYO©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
40 Comments
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JTC
Stupid decision.
Look at whats happened recently between NZ and AUS.
Sanjinosebleed
Best decision ever! Get back to normal, enough with the ludicrous Covid mania!
Steven Mccarthy
Another horrible and dangerous decision.!.
Paul
Floating petri dishes, that's what they are! Anyone who chooses to go in one, deserve what they get...
sakurasuki
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/
ghosthand
Gambare gambare Nihon! Keep openingu up! And keep masking up -- with a high quality N95 mask -- so you all can stay open and safe!
Aly Rustom
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.
didou
Diamond Cruise is back
Rodney
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.
Fighto!
Sign up now for a floating petrie dish!
dbsaiya
And so based on past experience, what are the protocols when another cluster infection is confirmed on board?
GenHXZ
Covid Cruises back on the menu, lets go!
REDWhiteBlue
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?
GenHXZ
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.
deanzaZZR
Cruise ships are great virus incubators. Good luck Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki!
Samit Basu
@JTC
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.
Steven Mccarthy
Book your cruise @ NorthernNOlife …/ you’re not worried …. Right ?
KazukoHarmony
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.
louisferdinandc
@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.
Stewie
@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.
Kenchi
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…
Aly Rustom
as long as the J gov keeps it closed BOTH ways. No foreigners in? OK- NO JAPANESE ALLOWED OVERSEAS
Cool?
Jordi Puentealto
Keep them away!
William Round
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
GillislowTier
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
shogun36
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.
wolfshine
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.
virusrex
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?
Kenchi
it makes no difference and equates to be the same in many people’s heads.
charles chevaux
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.
charles chevaux
Popular cruise ship family and group illnesses: