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TThe Apex was almost finished. A new cruise ship for the Celebrity Cruises line, it was an imposing 117,000-ton vessel with luxuries like a “resort deck” with martini glass hot tubs and a cantilevered side-swing platform known as “the magic carpet.” “- to be used as an open-air restaurant. As the builders put the finishing touches on it, the company hosted parties for the crew and contractors, even as the rest of the world was closing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Alexandra Nedeltcheva was one of the waitresses. Although he avoided parties, he served contractors and crew in one of the ship’s restaurants. She says she hired Covid-19 before the Apex even left port.
“It’s very scary, you don’t know how long it will last,” says a Nedeltcheva cough. She says she had trouble getting someone to answer her calls for medicine and help. “When I called a doctor and said, ‘Can you get me some medicine? My head is going to explode, “they said,” there are people sicker than you, stay where you are. “
She is one of more than 100 Celebrity Cruises crew members who have joined a class action lawsuit filed against the company on April 14, alleging that it failed to take timely action to protect workers, despite having weeks of notice that the coronavirus was spreading worldwide.
The ship is no exception. Around the world, a Guardian investigation has discovered at least 50 ships facing Covid-19 outbreaks among the crew.
Nedeltcheva, who managed to catch a charter flight to her hometown in Bulgaria, may have been one of the lucky ones.
More than 100,000 other crew members, including hundreds of their colleagues aboard the Apex, remain trapped on their ships.
Most have no communication with the outside world, and those who do are often afraid of losing any prospect of future work by complaining. However, in the course of The Guardian’s investigation, a portrait has begun to emerge of what is indeed a nation of floating castaways, abandoned on ships from the Galapagos Islands to the port of Dubai.
The first cruise ship to deal with Covid-19 cases, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined at the dock in Japan for two weeks beginning February 3. But cruises continued to depart until mid-March. Although most of the passengers have been repatriated since then, the Covid-19 outbreaks continue to spread among the crew trapped on the ships. Last week, employees aboard the Queen Victoria, who had just arrived in Southampton, were told that they would have to be quarantined in their cabins for 14 days because the Covid-19 cases had been confirmed on board, according to a recording of the Captain’s announcement obtained by Business Insider.
In the United States, the situation was so grim aboard the Oasis of the Seas, from which rescue teams have repeatedly evacuated sick workers to hospitals in Florida, that the captain made an announcement over the loudspeaker asking members of the crew not filming their coworkers. out of the boat in ambulances, according to an account of an employee turned over to the Miami Herald.
Another member of the class action lawsuit against Celebrity Cruises, owned by Royal Caribbean, is Julia Melim, a US resident. USA Who organized the Celebrity Infinity shopping and port tourism program on the onboard television channel. Melim was one of only seven crew members authorized to leave the ship in Miami last week. The rest remain on board. She says there was so much illness that the ship’s medical staff cleaned the entire third floor to isolate and treat people who had symptoms.
The cruise industry says that cruise lines were as blind to the pandemic as the rest of the world and that those on the ships have not experienced higher infection rates than those on the ground.
A spokesperson for Celebrity Cruises said: “We have no higher priority than keeping our guests and crew safe, healthy, cared for and well informed. At all times we have worked closely with the government and health authorities and we are grateful for their guidance. We are working with all appropriate authorities to ensure the safe return home of all members of our crew. “
The Cruise Line Industry Association says it is still gathering information on how many of its ships have been affected, but says it knows of 899 confirmed cases of Covid-19 aboard 15 ocean cruises so far.
“This represents 0.06% of confirmed cases worldwide,” the association said in a statement. “It is difficult to know how many of those confirmed cases are crew members, as we are still in the process of collecting that information as well.”
Those numbers seem to vastly underestimate the problem, given that the Diamond Princess alone had over 600 cases. Another cruise ship, the Ruby Princess, accused of spreading the disease across Australia in March, has now overtaken the Diamond Princess on the scale of its deadly outbreak: 21 people died and 900 were infected aboard the ship.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). USA Cruises have been specifically identified as global propagators of the coronavirus.
“Cruises are often the scene of infectious disease outbreaks due to the semi-closed environment and contact between travelers from many countries,” said a CDC order of April 4, which prohibits those leaving cruise ships from taking commercial flights on United States. “Covid-19 outbreaks on cruise ships pose a risk of the disease spreading rapidly beyond the voyage.”
Most ships have a single doctor and a few nurses for thousands of passengers and crew, according to the workers. Ships generally depend on hospitals on land for urgent care. However, due to the pandemic, the United States and other ports refuse to accept all but the most serious cases.
“Basically they don’t get medical attention,” says Michael Winkleman, the Miami attorney who filed the class action lawsuit. “They are locked in their rooms and told that they can call an advice line for help. But when they call, nobody comes.
Cruise lines have few resources to seek government help for urgent medical care. While many of the major cruise companies, including Carnival and Royal Caribbean, are based in the United States, the companies are registered in low-tax countries. Carnival is technically a Panamanian company and Royal Caribbean is registered in Liberia, which means that they pay almost no US taxes.
Likewise, their ships are typically flagged in countries such as the Bahamas or Bermuda, allowing them to avoid strict safety standards, labor laws, and environmental restrictions that they might otherwise face in the United States.
A ship flying the flag of convenience means that the owner has registered the ship in a country other than their own. The ship flies the flag or the flag of that country, known as the flag state and operates under its laws, generally more lax than those of the owner.
For a boat owner, the advantage of this deal includes comparatively fewer regulations, lower employment requirements, and therefore cheaper labor, cheaper registration fees, and lower or no taxes.
For crew members, disadvantages tend to lower work standards, fewer rights, and little protection. The International Federation of Transport Workers opposes them.
Panama, which has the largest ship registry in the world, followed by Liberia, operates an “open registry”, which allows foreign owners to register ships under its flag. Guarantees anonymity to owners, making it difficult to hold them accountable.
The practice began in the 1920s in the USA. USA, when cruise ship owners registered their vessels in Panama so that they could serve alcohol to their passengers during Prohibition.
Karen McVeigh, senior reporter
U.S. Coast Guard officials said in a memo on March 29 that the outbreaks aboard the ships are depleting medical and rescue resources in the Florida region. The bulletin, first obtained by the Miami Herald, asked ships carrying more than 50 people to prepare to provide their own medical care to those on board for prolonged periods.
“Foreign-flagged ships that roam beyond the territorial seas of the United States, particularly those registered in the Bahamas” should seek help from the countries where they are marked, he added.
Officials in the Bahamas responded with their own note, saying that the medical system of the small Caribbean island nation would be overwhelmed if it had to care for all the sick aboard cruise ships.
“The cruise industry is facing an unprecedented crisis, and we in the Bahamas, facing the same global crisis, are doing everything we can to provide support,” said the statement from the transport ministry and local government. “Our system is not designed to cope with a massive influx of new Covid-19 patients from outside our country.”
On some ships, crew members say they are being treated well, and some have been moved to passenger cabins with balconies and more space to quarantine. The Celebrity Serenade team made a parody video of their time confined in their cabins at sea. Some reported receiving bonuses from their cruise lines. Celebrity Edge, currently floating in the Bahamas, distributed a video of the ship’s captain delivering meals to quarantined workers’ rooms.
On other ships, the situation is serious. Workers have complained that food seemed to be running out, and that they were forced to pay online.
Many crew members have had their wages cut completely. Workers on board multiple ships operated by the Geneva-based MSC cruise line, according to MSC letters seen by The Guardian, are no longer paid after their contracts expired or were canceled early by the company. due to the global pandemic.
A spokesperson for MSC Cruises said: “MSC Cruises has made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend its cruise operations. As this health crisis has caused all of our ships to stop operating around the world, we have temporarily agreed to free most of our crew from their duties and are working to identify and pay for airline tickets for everyone to return home. safely for as long as it lasts. of the temporary suspension of the operations of the ships. We offer all those who stay on board full board and free accommodation, assigning each of them a guest cabin for individual use. “
A former crew member from another major cruise ship, Krista Thomas, who lives in Vancouver, has been leading a private Facebook group to update crew members at sea on how to get home.
She says that many crew members are afraid to speak. They depend on the cruise industry for a living, and cruise pay, while low compared to average wages in many developed countries, is often much higher than they can earn at home.
“They’re probably not just taking care of a wife and children; they’re taking care of parents and in-laws,” says Thomas. “They are living contract to contract to survive … They don’t want to destroy the industry.” It’s been a huge success because of what happened and they don’t want to see their industry fall apart. “
Ross Klein, who has written books criticizing the cruise industry and runs a website reporting on cruise-related incidents, says crew members from developing countries “are as close to contract bondage as possible.” . He argues that cruise companies have a responsibility to take care of them.
“Workers are powerless,” he says. “Employers have a moral and ethical duty to care for these people that they brought in from around the world. There have to be ways to find a solution to get these people home safely. ”
Alexandra Nedeltcheva, who is still experiencing the symptoms of Covid-19, had to pay an Airbnb to quarantine her near her home in Bulgaria, so she does not expose her family. He still cares about his friends aboard the Celebrity Apex in Saint-Nazaire in France. There, as of April 14, two workers remained hospitalized with severe Covid-19 and 700 crew members were still working or isolated, according to a report by a French television station.
Nedeltcheva says she has enjoyed seeing the world in her 11 years working with Celebrity Cruises, but the treatment she says the crew received during the pandemic opened her eyes.
“I really want something to change,” she says. “They can take much better care of their crew. It is time for the cruise industry to improve. “
