Global Health Governance for Travel Health: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Outbreaks in Large Cruise Ships

Zhou, Shu-duo; Han, Lu; Liu, Pei-long; Zheng, Zhi-Jie

The outbreak and global pandemic of COVID-19 have attracted a great deal of attentions to the problem of travel health. Cruise tourism is increasingly popular, with an estimated 30 million passengers transported on cruise ships worldwide each year. Safeguarding the health of cruise travelers during the entire travel is of ultimate importance for both the industry and global public health. Up to April 2020, nearly thirty cruise ship voyages had reported COVID-19 cases. The Diamond Princess, Grand Princess and Ruby Princess cruise ship had over 1400 total reported COVID-19 cases, and more than 30 deaths. Travel health transcends national borders and involves multilevel actors, thus needs global cooperation and governance. The global governance framework including problems, values, tools or regulations, and actors related to travel health were used to analyze the issues involved. Regulations and legislation at global and country level are required to prevent large-scale humanitarian crisis on travel health. Multilateral coordination, cooperation and collaboration mechanisms between governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and industry are needed to build a better community of common destiny for travel health.