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Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a number of international cruise ships were infected, thereby resulting in serious public health and human rights problems. Multiple difficulties were encountered in the prevention and control of the coronavirus disease onboard ships, while rule-based internatio...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002198/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33806680 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9030281 |
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author | Zhang, Xiaohan Wang, Chao |
author_facet | Zhang, Xiaohan Wang, Chao |
author_sort | Zhang, Xiaohan |
collection | PubMed |
description | During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a number of international cruise ships were infected, thereby resulting in serious public health and human rights problems. Multiple difficulties were encountered in the prevention and control of the coronavirus disease onboard ships, while rule-based international cooperation in this regard appeared inefficient and ineffective. By applying interdisciplinary methodologies, including empirical research of law, policy science, and health studies, this research reviewed the legal difficulties in the prevention and control of COVID-19 on international cruise ships and sought solutions from a policy-making and strategic perspective. We found that, apart from the inherent nature of cruise ships such as crowded semi-enclosed areas, shared sanitary facilities and limited medical resources, there are also nonnegligible legal reasons affecting the effectiveness of containment measures on board. In particular, there is ambiguity and even inconsistency of relevant international norms and domestic regulations, and some of the key rules are neither mandatory nor enforceable. We conclude by suggesting that rule-based international cooperation on this issue must be strengthened with respect to information sharing and management, a more effective supervisory mechanism, clarification of key rules over jurisdiction and distributions of obligations among the port states, flag states, nationality states, and cruise ship companies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8002198 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80021982021-03-28 Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies Zhang, Xiaohan Wang, Chao Healthcare (Basel) Article During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a number of international cruise ships were infected, thereby resulting in serious public health and human rights problems. Multiple difficulties were encountered in the prevention and control of the coronavirus disease onboard ships, while rule-based international cooperation in this regard appeared inefficient and ineffective. By applying interdisciplinary methodologies, including empirical research of law, policy science, and health studies, this research reviewed the legal difficulties in the prevention and control of COVID-19 on international cruise ships and sought solutions from a policy-making and strategic perspective. We found that, apart from the inherent nature of cruise ships such as crowded semi-enclosed areas, shared sanitary facilities and limited medical resources, there are also nonnegligible legal reasons affecting the effectiveness of containment measures on board. In particular, there is ambiguity and even inconsistency of relevant international norms and domestic regulations, and some of the key rules are neither mandatory nor enforceable. We conclude by suggesting that rule-based international cooperation on this issue must be strengthened with respect to information sharing and management, a more effective supervisory mechanism, clarification of key rules over jurisdiction and distributions of obligations among the port states, flag states, nationality states, and cruise ship companies. MDPI 2021-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8002198/ /pubmed/33806680 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9030281 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ). |
spellingShingle | Article Zhang, Xiaohan Wang, Chao Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies |
title | Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies |
title_full | Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies |
title_fullStr | Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies |
title_full_unstemmed | Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies |
title_short | Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Pandemic on International Cruise Ships: The Legal Controversies |
title_sort | prevention and control of covid-19 pandemic on international cruise ships: the legal controversies |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002198/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33806680 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9030281 |
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