Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who advised cruise lines on Covid protocols, told CNBC on Friday that he believes a safe environment can be created on ships.
Gottlieb’s comments came a day after Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state had sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urging the public health agency to allow cruise lines to resume shipping from U.S. ports immediately.
Gottlieb, who co-chaired an advisory group to Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean, told Squawk Box that companies have sensitive policies in place to prepare for when they are allowed to start operating after a Covid break that lasted more than a year.
“They have engaged in things like mandatory passenger testing. Norwegian Cruise Line recently came out saying they will need to vaccinate all their passengers,” said Gottlieb, who served as commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 until 2019 in the Trump Administration.
Gottlieb also mentioned that social distancing would be possible on ships, saying that “these cruises will not operate at full capacity”.
“As you begin to implement all of these public health recommendations … you begin to create an environment that could be quite safe,” he said. “I think you can create a safe balloon around that experience, especially when you compare it to other holiday experiences where you can’t control the environment,” he added.
Cruise ships were hot spots for Covid outbreaks last year in the early days of the global health crisis, prompting the CDC to issue its no-fly order in mid-March 2020. While the CDC issued some guidelines for cruise lines in its conditional navigation. on request, the agency did not specify once again for operators to resume navigation from US ports.
In response to CNBC’s request for comment on Gottlieb’s remarks, the CDC said in an email that it is “committed to working with the cruise industry and shipping partners to resume navigation following the step-by-step approach set out in the conditional navigation order.” . This goal is in line with the desire to resume passenger operations in the United States, expressed by many major cruise ship operators and passengers, hopefully by mid-summer. “
However, the cruise industry is getting more and more impatient as companies have raised billions in debt and issued new inventories to finance operations as shipping revenues have dried up. At the end of last month, a trade group asked the CDC to allow a gradual restart in early July. Operators said they see a strong demand for reservations, suggesting people are starting to feel comfortable returning to cruises.
In a CNBC interview on Wednesday, Carnival CEO Arnold Donald pointed to differences between restrictions in America and other countries around the world, where cruises have resumed in some places.
“Today, a person can fly from the United States to another country. He gets on a cruise ship and then returns to the United States, whether or not they are vaccinated,” Donald told Closing Bell. “But here in the United States, even if you’re vaccinated right now, you couldn’t get on a cruise ship.”
Donald congratulated the Biden administration on its work on the distribution of Covid vaccination in the United States, where about 20% of the population is fully vaccinated. He said he believes the cruise industry and the CDC will be able to reach a joint agreement on navigation.
“The administration has made huge strides in vaccinations and gaining control,” Donald said. “We are confident that we can work together and come up with something that would be a viable solution, and hopefully we will still have US navigation this summer.”
Royal Caribbean CEO Richard Fain told CBS This Morning on Thursday that he would like the cruise industry to be “treated in a very similar way to the airlines” that were allowed to fly. However, Fain is optimistic about the possible resumption of US shipping in the second half of this year, citing President Joe Biden’s goal of returning the company to normalcy by July 4th.
– CNBC’s Katie Tsai contributed to the report.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a board member of Pfizer, Tempus Genetic Testing Company, Aetion Inc.. and the biotechnology company Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel.