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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...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Xiaohan, Wang, Chao
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
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.
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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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