CCL-Carnival Cruise Line announced a plan to use CCL ships to meet up, exchange and repatriate thousands of shipboard staff-crew back to their home countries. The complex logistics started with 18 CCL liners leaving their current anchorages (or homeports) and processing to a rendezvous location in The Bahamas (between Bimini Islands and Great Harbour Cay).
After all these CCL ships have arrived, a network of tender boats will be used to transfer the crews to whichever vessel is heading for their home country. A total of 9 Carnival ships will repatriate 10,000+ healthy crew who are currently isolated onboard due to restrictions limiting flights from the USA to Europe, Asia, Africa, India, Latin America.
Carnival Spirit and Carnival Splendor (previously deployed in Australia) are already repatriating crew to India, Indonesia and The Philippines. In early-April, Carnival Panorama left homeport Los Angeles California to repatriate Filipino staff-crew. The liner is expected to arrive in Manila on May 8.
CCL ships not used for crew repatriation will dock (or remain anchored at sea) off the coasts of Panama and Bahamas. CCL plans to resume passenger shipping operations on June 27, 2020, in conjunction with the CDC's current “No Sail Order” (100 days of no ship cruising).
Prior to pausing operations (on March 13), CCL's fleet of 27 cruise ships had ~29,000 crew onboard. Since then, the company has already repatriated 10,000+ staff-crew via international charter flights. Another 10,000 will be repatriated via these 9 "crew cruises" leaving this week. About 6,000 additional crew will be repatriated via charter flights or via 3 ships that already departed from LA (Long Beach) and Australia.
By the time all of the crew repatriations are completed, the CCL fleet will be crewed by only ~3,000 (essential personnel) needed for safe operational manning - or ~110 crew per vessel.
For Coronavirus updates on cruise ship quarantines (infected passengers and crew) and top-pandemic countries (COVID-19 cases and deaths, daily updated statistics) see at CruiseMapper's Norovirus page.