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The number of deaths from the worldwide coronavirus outbreak has now passed 2,000.
The cruise ship Diamond Princess was quarantined in Japan after a Hong Kong passenger tested positive for the virus. More than 600 of its 3,000 passengers have now been confirmed with COVID-19, despite all passengers being isolated from each other. (This is the second-largest number after China.)
The cruise ship MS Westerdam was denied entry into the Philippines, Japan, Guam and Thailand despite asserting that “this ship is virus free.” After the ship docked in Cambodia, a passenger who disembarked was confirmed with the virus. Unfortunately, passengers had not been quarantined; in fact they were encouraged to tour the city and several boarded planes.
Against this backdrop, at 2:30 this afternoon Captain Aivo spoke to Seven Seas Mariner passengers to provide an update on our upcoming itinerary, which is scheduled to go to Asia.
The update: We will not be going to Asia.
We have mentioned that our World Cruise is composed of several shorter itineraries strung together. These include:
Ports along the way include Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. But Regent headquarters, “in an abundance of caution and as a result of the uncertainty surrounding port entry,” has decided to revise both of these itineraries. Instead of proceeding north after Sydney, we will now head south and spend a couple of weeks cruising around Australia before heading back up to Sri Lanka.
Our new itinerary between Mar 1-Apr 8 will now look like this (changes in red):
[NOTE: This itinerary was revised on February 28, 2020]
Unfortunately, Singapore was due to be a major port for many passengers and crew. (14 crew and 72 passengers were due to disembark there.) In addition, many crew are from Indonesia and were looking forward to seeing their families and loved ones. The Regent staff are working to address all of these situations. We are impressed by the amount of work that must have gone into making all of these changes, and we applaud the Regent staff for their tremendously hard work. We feel for anyone who has been negatively affected by the Coronavirus situation.
When we booked this world cruise two years ago, we knew that the itinerary would be subject to change. We are fine with the new schedule and look forward to seeing more of Australia. Above all, we remain safe and healthy along with our fellow passengers and our stellar crew.