A Royal Caribbean Ship Has a COVID Problem -- and That's OK
It's the kind of headline that would send the cruise industry reeling in the springtime of last year. When Royal Caribbean's (NYSE: RCL) Symphony of the Seas pulled into Miami after a seven-day cruise on Saturday, it arrived with 48 passengers and crew members testing positive for COVID-19.
Did Royal Caribbean have to cancel future sailings to tend to the ill? No. The very next weeklong cruise took off with fresh passengers later that day -- as planned. Will Royal Caribbean's legal team have to fend off class action lawsuits stemming from the outbreak? Probably not. Vaccination requirements and other safeguards find the the four dozen positive cases seemingly dealing with mild or no symptoms of the COVID-19 virus.
It took Royal Caribbean and its peers more than a year to start sailing again after putting cruises on hold since mid-March of last year. There were a few hiccups with the gradual resumption of stateside-originating cruises, but things appear to be going as well as, if not better than, expected. Headlines of 48 people coming down with COVID-19 on a cruise are no longer scary. Dig deeper into this weekend's story, and the prognosis is probably better than you might expect.
Source Fool.com
