CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky testified in a Senate hearing today that the cruise industry has “stepped up” and is interested in “doing and exceeding” the sail order that is currently in place.
Per a C-SPAN transcript, here is here response to a question from Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska:
“Yeah, thank you, Senator. And I think the conditional sail order and the fact that the industry has stepped up and now interested in doing and exceeding, as you know, the compliance with the sail order without the order necessarily needing to be in place is a real testimony to how well that’s worked and how we’ve worked collaboratively with the industry. What I can say is over the last two weeks with Omicron, we’ve seen a 30-fold increase in cases on ships during the season because of Omicron. While I anticipate that the ships following conditional sail order will continue to do the oversight and watch and do all the technical assistance and support and every single way, we anticipate the order will not be renewed and the cruise ship industries will continue to understand this is a really safe practice for those industries. What I can’t predict is what the summer will bring.“
This was a very small part of a much larger hearing that also included heated exchanges between Dr. Fauci and Sen. Paul Rand.
For the full video and/or transcript of the proceedings, please follow this link to C-SPAN’s site.
