Seafarers demanding information on coronavirus protection
Home / News / Seafarers demanding information on coronavirus protection
If seafarers aboard commercial oceangoing cargo ships start to become infected with the coronavirus there’s major trouble ahead for the global transport network.
Ocean shipping is a relatively opaque industry, but a coronavirus outbreak among seafarers is likely to become public knowledge fairly quickly if it happens. Crew are represented by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) union, an organization that defends crew aggressively, which is in constant contact with crewmembers and is highly open with the press.
Fabrizio Barcellona, assistant secretary of the union’s seafarer section, was a speaker on a special webinar on how the coronavirus affects shipping held recently by Capital Link, the New York-based investor relations and advisory firm.
But if the seafarer labor pool were to become infected, the scope of the trade problem could broaden well beyond cargo flows to and from China. With the exception of some container and dry bulk routes, most oceangoing vessels do not simply go back and forth. Their itineraries are global.
With thanks to FreightWaves/American Shipper