Yesterday, the Carnival Glory received a score of 99 by the United States Public Health sanitation inspectors at the port of Miami. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has not officially published the score on its Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) database yet. A draft report, sent from a crew member who wishes to remain anonymous, is below.
The passing score is good news for Carnival which has recently seen three of its cruise ships receive failing scores from USPH sanitation inspectors (the Carnival Triumph, Carnival Breeze and Carnival Vista). The USPH caught Carnival intentionally trying to conceal food and galley equipment from sanitation inspectors by placing the food and galley items in crew member cabins and hallways during an inspection of the Vista in December.
A number of newspapers, including the Miami Herald, covered the stories of the failed Carnival sanitation and health scores. This was particularly embarrassing for Carnival as the Triumph, which infamously earned the nickname as the "poop cruise" for unsanitary conditions following an engine room fire which disabled the ship several years ago, received a score of only 77 out of 100.
There was a considerable delay by the CDC in posting the failed scores of the Carnival cruise ships on its VSP database. In the case of the Vista, the CDC did not post the failed sanitation score until over six weeks after the failed sanitation inspection. Carnival claimed that it immediately addressed the problems, but it had still not filed a corrected actions report, indicating that the cruise ship corrected the sanitation deficiencies, when the report was finally posted the following month.
The cruise industry’s trade organization, the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), and several travel publications which cater to the cruise lines, have recently tried to counter the bad publicity caused by the three failed scores for the Carnival ships, by issuing press statements or articles pointing out that 33 cruise ships earned perfect 100 scores in the past year.
The last USPH inspection of the Glory occurred last April and resulted in a score of 97.
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Photo credit: Carnival Glory – Sunnya343 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons / wikimedia.; USPH report – anonymous.