Cruise Advocates Not Happy With CDC's Color-Coded COVID Chart For Ships

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - To take a cruise or not to take a cruise, plenty of people are booking trips while others are still undecided.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a tool that might be helpful in the decision-making process. It's a color coded chart that tells you if a ship is being monitored and the ship's COVID status.

Green stands for no cases of COVID, orange means there have been cases but they were below the CDC threshold, yellow indicates it met the threshold and triggered an investigation, and red means the ship is above the threshold. Gray indicates the ship has not been reviewed.

Just one case of COVID-19-like symptoms could prompt the CDC to monitor or investigate a ship.

What is the CDC threshold that triggers an investigation?  If the cases onboard are reported in one percent or more of passengers an investigation may commence.

Cruise advocates are not happy with the color chart or thresholds.

Cruise industry advocate and expert Stewart Chiron told CBS4, "The color code is actually useless for the consumer. You can go from green to yellow based on one over seven passengers on board on board a ship within a seven day period."

The CDC admits the chart is continually out of date due to logistics

CBS4 reached out to the CDC, wanting to talk with someone about the color code chart. They declined.

"Thanks for reaching out. We (are) declining to participate in an interview. Please check out our website for more information. Here is the website for the Color Code Chart," according to an email sent by the agency.

The cruise industry insists that cruising is safer than being in at a football game or a concert.

According to Chiron, Royal Caribbean reported they have had more than a million cruise passengers with only 1,745 cases of COVID-like symptoms, which is only 0.15 percent. In comparison, he pointed to Miami-Dade's positivity rate of 28 percent last week.