As a US flagged company operating ships smaller than 250 passengers, American Queen is not restricted by the shutdown imposed on most cruise ships by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meanwhile, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said this week she’s unable to give a timeline for the move into a second phase of the conditional sail order and a gradual return to cruising for larger ships from US ports, “because it’s not solely in our jurisdiction to address.”

So far, the CDC has only provided guidelines for the first phase of what will be a four-stage process to get cruises operating safely post-pandemic. At a hearing on a plan to allow ships to get around Ottawa’s ban on visits by ships in Canadian ports and sail directly to Alaska this summer, the state’s Senator Lisa Murkowski asked about timing for resumption of cruises from US ports. Walensky refused to say whether it could take a month or until the end of 2021 to finalize a framework for test cruises and health protocols.

Read it all in the Cruisington Times