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This is Cruise Radio.

Hey, how's it going? My name is Doug Parker.

Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Cruise Radio. Very happy to have you here, my friend. A review of Carnival Miracle this week and standing by right now is staff writer Richard Sims with Cruise News. Hey, Richard.

Hey, Doug. So the CDC has dropped the cruise travel threat down a notch. Yeah, so what this is, this is called a travel health

notice. And for quite a while now, they've had the travel health notice, or THN, at a level

four, which is the highest it goes. And it basically says that the threat level of, you know,

of catching COVID on a cruise ship is extremely very high, and they were advising against all cruise travel,

that kind of thing. So they've lowered it one level to level three, which still is high,

but it's a step in the right direction. In fact, that's exactly what the Cruise Lines International

Association said. They released a statement saying, you know, this shows that the CDC is at least aware of the fact that we're making all this progress and that we have all of these protocols in place and, you know, that we are doing all the right things. I think what's interesting is less the fact that the threat level came down, which is good, you know, make no mistake about it. That's a very positive, and it's certainly great for the cruise industry to be able to say that. But I think what's really

going to be more interesting is we are only a few days away from the deadline, which is February

18th, for cruise ships to announce whether or not they're going to opt into the CDC's new

voluntary program. And that is

actually going to be, I think, it'll probably have a bigger impact on cruisers than will

this dropping of the travel health notice level. Because we're all waiting to hear, you know,

are cruise lines going to require booster shots? And that is,

in order for cruise lines to sail with the, you know, the highest level of the CDC's approval,

they have to not only have 95% of the crew members vaccinated, but they also have to have,

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