A U.S. judge ruled that Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) can require passengers to show documentation to confirm their coronavirus vaccination status before boarding a ship, the Washington Post reports. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her ruling that the cruise company had “demonstrated that public health will be jeopardized if it is required to suspend its vaccination requirement.” When the coronavirus first hit, cruise lines resembled Petri dishes as the disease spread quickly onboard, so documentation proving that people are fully vaccinated seems to be the responsible thing to do — but not if you’re Gov. Ron DeSantis. As Forbes points out, Florida is being ravaged by COVID.
“Florida is not only far and away the epicenter of the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” in the United States, it has one of the highest infection rates on the planet,” the outlet reports. I”f the Sunshine State were a country, it would be no. 2 in the world, behind only the island of St. Barts, according to data from the Brown School of Public Health.”
We can always count on DeSantis to do the wrong thing.
“DeSantis has fought tooth and nail to prohibit cruise lines from requiring passengers sailing from Florida to show proof of their vaccination status,” the report adds. “And he has kept cruise lines from defying his law by threatening fines of $5,000 per passenger, potentially adding up to millions of dollars per cruise.”
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For months, the cruise line has said that the safest way to cruise again is if every single person on a ship is vaccinated.
“The company’s policy of 100% vaccination of guests and crew was in place without issue in every port it sails from around the world except for Florida,” the company said in a statement Sunday. “Despite the ongoing global pandemic and the accelerating spread of the Delta variant, Florida prohibited the company from requiring vaccine documentation which the company believed would enable it to resume sailing in the safest way possible.”
The Sunshine State is suffering from a record-breaking number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, and it is now the nation’s new virus epicenter. DeSantis has resisted shutting down his state, and the Florida Republican issued an executive order that would cut off funding to schools that implemented mask mandates. And while this is a major blow to DeSantis, it’s a victory for the United States.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
