Global health governance for travel health: lessons learned from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks in large cruise ships

Abstract

The outbreak and global pandemic of COVID-19 have attracted a great deal of attentions to the problem of travel health. Cruise tourism is increasingly popular, with an estimated 30 million passengers transported on cruise ships worldwide each year. Safeguarding the health of cruise travelers during the entire travel is of ultimate importance for both the industry and global public health. Up to April 2020, nearly thirty cruise ship voyages had reported COVID-19 cases. The Diamond Princess, Grand Princess and Ruby Princess cruise ship had over 1400 total reported COVID-19 cases, and more than 30 deaths. Travel health transcends national borders and involves multilevel actors, thus needs global cooperation and governance. The global governance framework including problems, values, tools or regulations, and actors related to travel health were used to analyze the issues involved. Regulations and legislation at global and country level are required to prevent large-scale humanitarian crisis on travel health. Multilateral coordination, cooperation and collaboration mechanisms between governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and industry are needed to build a better community of common destiny for travel health.

Travel Motivation during COVID-19: A Case from Nepal

“…In this study, travel motivation signifies travelers' willingness to choose destination and mode preferences to make their travel safe and pleasant while visiting a tourist destination. Perceptions and attitudes can be changed in different contexts and times [13,27,39,40]. Thus, this study picked up the travel motivation and factors related to COVID-19 for people's travel planning.…”

“…Different scholars mentioned that consumer behaviors changed because of COVID-19 [39,40]. Therefore, we need additional confirmation on travel motivation, destination selection, and mode preferences because internal and external environments can influence people's perceptions, and it changes with time being [13,27,39,40]. Based on the survey conducted in Nepal, this study discusses travel motivation and factors contributing to it during COVID-19.…”

“…Travel motivation and related factors have been studied widely [4,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Travel motivation during COVID-19 for ordinary work in Bangladesh [19], travel motivation and psychological behavior in Australia [34], air travelers' motivation in China [35], and the relation between school breaks and international travel motivation in Germany [36] were explored in different geographical locations.…”

Legal issues and challenges in addressing the coronavirus outbreak on large cruise ships: A critical examination of port state measures

“…Thirdly, Annex 1 to IHR explicitly specifies the ‘core capacity requirements for designated airports, ports and ground crossings’, but these provisions are generally abstract and need revision. States must establish and improve their health service systems for travel health, strengthen core capacities of ports, and establish comprehensive emergency response mechanisms for public health emergencies ( Zhou et al, 2020 ). For instance, what is the basic standard for judging ‘adequate staff, equipment and premises’ that the port needs to provide at all times?…”

A New Method for the Sputum Cytology Test Without Direct Contact to Specimens During COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first detected in China in December 2019, and declared as a pandemic by the WHO on March 11, 2020 (1)(2)(3). During the period of COVID-19, the specimens of blood, body fluids, and excreta received in the department of pathology increased the risk of infection (4,5). Pathology technicians in the middle-and small-scale hospitals, which are short of professional protection capabilities, such as negative pressure laboratories and microbiology laboratories, are more susceptible to virus infection, as they are often exposed to a variety of pathological samples of patients (6,7).…”