The Covid nightmare for Asian seafarers: without a vaccine, 1.5 million cannot work

BANGKOK – There is a category of workers who cross the world every day to fill the supermarkets of our cities and villages, transporting between 80 and 90 percent of all goods, industrial and construction materials, cars, foodstuffs, medicines and even vaccines. But very few seafarers, a tiny minority who were lucky enough to be born in some first world country, are immunized against Covid and live offshore for months and months forced into the often narrow spaces of cargo and ships that cross the oceans.