American Queen Steamboat Company resumes sailings on June 29

   May 26, 2020 ,   Cruise Industry

AQSC-American Queen Steamboat Company plans to resume sailings on the USA's rivers on June 29 with American Duchess (Mississippi). AQSC (which also owns Victory Cruise Lines) intends to debut one of its Victory ships on the Great Lakes starting July 1.

The company released enhanced safety measures and guidelines aimed to keep passengers and crew safe from the COVID. These include pre-cruise screening (passengers and staff-crew) and new boarding procedures. Both ashore and onboard operations feature enhanced cleaning procedures.

All touristst are required to complete a health and safety questionnaire. At check-in, an Ochsner medical professional performs health screenings and answers any questions. The medic also has the authority to deny boarding.

All tourists and crew complete a medical travel screening survey as well as have their temperatures taken. Thermal cameras take the temperature of each passenger and crew upon boarding the ship, in addition to the manual temperature checks during pre-cruise screenings.

The ship's access point is monitored when in port. Controlled access to the boat is maintained. All people are monitored by thermal imaging cameras upon reboarding (returning from shore excursions/tours).

AQSC's vessels support random manual screening at the primary access point in addition to thermal screening. In the event of a confirmed positive case, the ship manually screens absolutely everybody onboard.

American Duchess cruise ship

If a crew or passenger has an elevated temperature, he/she is evaluated by the Ochsner medical representative prior to boarding the ship. Any tourist with high temperature or showing signs/symptoms of illness or that management feels needs to be further assessed is sent directly to a local medical care partner for testing. Any crew/guest who tests positive for any contagious condition is not allowed near the boat.

Increased sanitation of contact surfaces is conducted hourly with higher concentrated solutions. 

Quarantine procedures are in place for short-term separation of the potentially ill crew or guests until the next call port, at which advanced medical care can be accessed. 

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.