It’s every guest’s responsibility to verify the travel requirements before the cruise departure. MSC Cruises has worked with the authorities in all of the regions and countries in which the ships operate to ensure its protocol meets and exceed the required health and safety measures. The below details are subject to change.
Before booking your cruise, please check HERE if you are allowed to embark according to your country of residence. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there might be international travel restrictions depending on your cruise destination and your country of residence.
The below requirements are valid for current and following sailings (health and safety measures are subject to change and will adapt according to the evolution of the pandemic).
Sailings departing from US ports on and from May 14, 2022
Please note that all Guests will need to follow all of these requirements to be allowed on board:
All guests ages 12 and above must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The vaccination requirement is also applicable to guests who have recovered from COVID-19 in the past 90 days. There is no requirement for a vaccine booster shot. All fully vaccinated guests are required to show proof of a negative RT-PCR or antigen test taken no more than 2 days before embarking the ship. Guests must bring the valid negative test certificate with them to the terminal.
All guests (2 – 11 years old) must provide proof of a negative RT-PCR test taken no more than 3 days before embarking the ship and an additional COVID-19 test will be performed at the terminal (free of charge) before boarding. Guests must bring the valid negative test certificate with them to the terminal.
No pre-embarkation or embarkation testing is required for guests under 2 years of age.
Guests are considered fully vaccinated if they received the full set of vaccine shots more than 14 days before the start of the cruise with an approved WHO Covid-19 vaccine including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Moderna, Oxford/Astrazeneca, Covishield, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Coronavac, Novavax/Covovax or any “mix-and-match” combination of accepted COVID-19 vaccines.
The vaccination certificate must be valid for the duration of the entire cruise.
To note: Guests that recovered from Covid-19 and received only one shot of vaccine are not considered as fully vaccinated and an antigen self-test is not accepted for embarkation, in both cases boarding will be denied.
Guests arriving to the US from international destinations prior to cruising:
The US Government requires all international guests flying into the US to show proof of a negative antigen or RT-PCR test taken no more than 1 day prior to their flight departure bound to the US; depending on the timing of the test taken prior to flight departure and the timing of ship embarkation, the test may or may not meet the requirements for ship’s embarkation. If the test taken prior to flight departure is more than 2 days prior to ship embarkation, it will be necessary to take a second test no more than 2 days prior to embarking the ship.
The original test and vaccination certificate must be presented at the terminal (paper or electronic format) and must be in English.The COVID 19 test certificate must contain: guest’s personal data (verifiable with the other travel documents), date of the test, identification / contact details of the centre that performed the analysis, technique used and negative test result.The COVID 19 vaccination certificate must contain: Personal identifiers (at a minimum, full name and date of birth) that match the personal identifiers on the passport, name of official source issuing the record, vaccine manufacturer and date(s) of vaccination.