These are the cleanest cruise ships in the world

A new study by the Florida-based travel insurance company Squaremouth collected data from the annual health and hygiene inspections of the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and based on this ranked the cleanest cruise companies in the US, which dominates the global cruise industry.

The data shows that independent cruise brands tend to achieve higher scores than the large corporations. A surprising finding in the study is that the age of the ship does not affect the ability to achieve a perfect score, as the ship "Adventure of the Seas" of Royal Caribbean, which was first launched in 2001, ranked high on the list.

Cruise ships are inspected by the CDC on a scale of up to 100 points. The inspections include all areas of the ship and are conducted unannounced, twice a year. To pass the inspection successfully, a ship must receive a score of at least 86. All the ships in the top ten received a score higher than 97.12.

The issue of hygiene is especially important on cruise ships, where thousands of people live simultaneously for an extended period of time. "Cruise ships are a shared environment where thousands of people touch the same surfaces every day", said Brian Sansoni, senior vice president of communications at the American Cleaning Institute.

Without strict cleaning and hygiene, bacteria can spread quickly, increasing the risk of illness among passengers and crew. Despite this, the study found that there is no connection between the number of viral outbreaks on a ship and its cleanliness scores, and showed that viral diseases can spread even on the cleanest ships.

Two companies from the top ten were also active in Israel until before the recent wars (with Gaza and Iran): Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean offered quite a few cruises to the Israeli public from Haifa, however at the moment they are not planned to operate cruises in the Mediterranean that will stop in Israel until the anger passes. However, those who fly to Europe will be able to board one of the cruise ships of these companies.