> [..] In March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the world, travel restrictions left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stuck onboard their ships,

> [..] In March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the world, travel restrictions left hundreds of thousands of seafarers stuck onboard their ships, working way past their contracted dates as they were unable to return to shore for repatriation. > At the time, few states acknowledged seafarers as key workers, making travel extremely difficult, if not impossible. Since then a number of countries have acknowledged their status and more recently, certain states have rolled out vaccination programmes. Imagine being at the at of a very long working period, months on sea. Then at the end you're asked to work for several more months. This as your relief cannot travel to you. Many additional months later you finally can be relieved. Except now there's still the issue of leaving the vessel, many countries ban you from leaving the vessel (often cannot even go to shore). Meanwhile the big shipping companies have been reaching out to their governments to try and fix this. Just to be ignored, basically. Only a month ago or so I noticed The Netherlands vaccinating everyone on a Dutch flagged vessel. This instead of only vaccinating the Dutch people on a Dutch vessel. It's quite shameful how these seafarers were treated by pretty much every country in the world.