Recently, a Singapore-based seaman company said that there were sporadic cases of infection in ships in the past, but now it is often the case that Covid-19 spreads quickly on the whole ship, which means that these ships can no longer sail. picture Wu Peiyuan, Associate Professor, Business School, National University of Singapore: This will affect the scheduling of freighters and impact the supply chain, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the price of consumer goods. The reason is that the whole shipping industry has been disrupted, and I am afraid that inflation will continue to rise. picture According to United Nations data, 80% of global trade depends on shipping, and 240,000 of the 1.6 million seafarers in the world come from India. Entry restrictions undoubtedly further aggravate the impact on the shipping industry. However, it is difficult to alleviate this situation in the short term. According to some insiders, compared with the supply chain interruption caused by the crew's inability to change shifts, the Suez Canal blockage in March will not be worth mentioning. picture Facing the grim situation, shipping agencies and maritime experts called for vaccinating rotating crew as soon as possible, which is the most feasible way to deal with this crisis. picture Esben polson, President of the International Shipping Association: For us, the most critical priority now is to persuade the government departments of various countries to give priority to vaccinating the relevant shipping workers as soon as possible. "Key workers" have no vaccine Karim, a marine engineer, said he had been trying to find the quota of Covid-19 vaccine on the designated government website. But, so far, nothing has been gained. This is familiar to thousands of seafarers across India, who cannot go abroad. On the other hand, the shipping authorities also advised the Indian crew at sea not to sign a contract with the ship until the situation improved. Abdulgani Serang, secretary-general of the National Union of Indian Seafarers, said: "The main problem is that seafarers have been designated as key workers, whether at home or in other countries, which means that the government should give priority to vaccinating them, but this has not happened in India." The main problem is that there is no vaccine at all. " India has an estimated 240,000 seafarers, mainly aged between 18 and 45, but the shortage of stocks has forced the authorities in many States to postpone the injection. Serang said: "Compared with people of other nationalities, unvaccinated Indian seafarers are now at a disadvantage. Although there is no comprehensive ban on Indian seafarers at present, shipowners are still worried." At present, ports like Singapore and Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates have banned ships from replacing crew members who have recently arrived from India, which makes it difficult for seafarers to disembark after the contract expires. It is reported that Zhoushan Port in China has banned any ships and crew members who have visited India and Bangladesh from entering the country. In the past three months, the epidemic situation in India and Bangladesh has been increasing. picture It is not easy to replace the Indian crew As more and more ports and airports are closed to seafarers entering and leaving India, shipping companies say that this will lead to bottlenecks in crew shifts, and some companies are temporarily transferring seafarers from other countries to replace Indians scheduled to board ships. Carl Schou, CEO of Wilhelmsen, a Norwegian company, said that 15% of its about 10,000 employees are from India, mainly managers. The company stopped changing crew members in India from April 24, at least until the end of May, and is currently looking for people of other nationalities to fill the vacancy. But it's not as easy as it sounds. For ships like LNG and oil tankers, which have very specific requirements on ability and experience level, many excellent talents are mostly from India. Therefore, all of a sudden, we lost an important source, and it is a big problem to find a suitable crew meeting the standards.