Imagine how guilty you’d feel!
We’re thinking southern Italy or Greece… FYI, Sicily announced plans for aggressive travel subsidies this year, offering major airfare/hotels incentives. My husband and I are keeping an eye on it.
Sicily offering subsidies?? What kind? Only flight/Hotel packages?
Keeping my travel $$ on the back burner hoping to throw them at HI as soon as I can.
Will keep folks posted as HI figures out it’s travel policy. The hotels are waiting for guidance, as is everyone else. There’s been silence.
Just read this from one of the HI Reps in our state legislature.
FAA OKs Testing of Tourists
By Rep Gene Ward @ 12:23 AM :: 416 Views :: Tourism, COVID-19
FEDS GIVE GREEN LIGHT TO TEST TOURISTS BEFORE ARRIVAL
“Promises quicker and safer opening of our economy”
News Release from Reps Bob McDermott and Gene Ward May 20, 2020
HONOLULU—Rep. Gene Ward (R-17 Hawaii Kai, Kalama Valley), after working with the White House for weeks seeking clarification if Hawaii could require COVID-19 testing for all visitors before arrival, today received word that nothing in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) regulations that prohibits the state from requiring such testing.
How are they going to test tourists? Do they have enough rapid tests? If you have to wait for the result for a few days, how would anyone know if they didn’t catch the virus while waiting? All they know is they were clear of the virus a few days ago. Could have would have but not now, not here.
Or are they going hold tourists in solitary quarantine until the test comes back? Sounds like buracratic nightmare. Not practical not realistic. I think we’d be better off if we admit there is no 100% safety and accept trying as best as we can is the best we can do.
A number of countries require visitors to show proofs that they tested negative (via PCR test) within the last 48 hours. One country, Iceland, will test visitors for free upon their arrival, if they can’t show proofs that they were tested negative and don’t want to be quarantined for 14 days at their own expenses.
This all is a work in progress and countries and other areas are all doing their best with whatever technology exists.
As far as I know there’s no 100% sure way to know that someone who tested as covid-19 negative 48 hours prior won’t be positive and contagious just after the test but everyone is doing the best they can. If someone knows of some magic method of doing this better, I’m sure they can make a quick fortune.
No one wants to fly with an ill and contagious person and I hope no one wants to infect everyone when they travel.
48 hours isn’t bad. Can you get the test back so soon? It will take half day to travel. That means you have to get the test the day before your travel and get the result on the same day. Has the test come back on the same day?
Doing the best isn’t the same as throwing out whatever they can. What they come up with has to be practical and realistic.
My question about the airport test is: would you test positive if you were virus free before traveling and exposed on the plane, airport, Uber, etc.?Would you shed enough virus just hours after exposure ~is the test that sensitive?
Oops; just realized @HImom posted a similar thought. Time for more coffee…?
Probably not and you could still get sick. It still eliminates a lot of possible transmissions and I think it is good if they can do 48 hour tests. My question is can you get the result so quick?
Austria’s testing ought to be repeated elsewhere IMO.
Test results in 3 hours.
One could still be infected on the plane, but to date, this rapid testing is the best I’ve seen that doesn’t involve 2 weeks of quarantine. I would also think if folks know they’re going to be tested with rapid results they’d be less likely to try to “cover up” traveling if they know they have symptoms.
I think the problem right now is the efficacy of rapid tests. Once they can get a consistent reading from rapid testing then I think travel will be able to open up. With a even small to moderate percentage of false negative numbers, the tests won’t be worth a hill of beans.
I think that even a false negative test result of 15% is enough to be off putting for me.
I would be interested in knowing what the percentage of false negatives are in the test used in Austria. And what the percentage of false negatives per hour of results. Are 15 minute test less effective than 3 hour tests?. Are 1 day test much more effective?
I didn’t know rapid tests were inaccurate. Even if it is acceptably accurate, there aren’t enough of them to go around. Last I heard, a while ago, they were making 50,000 tests a day. If we test everyone every day, it will require 300 million tests a day. No way they can jump from 50K to 300M anytime soon. The priority for rapid testing is given to health care workers. After that food producing group. Travelers are probably at the bottom of the list.
The sensitivity of any rapid PCR test will probably never approach 100% in the very near future. One alternative is to use multiple point-of-care testing systems simultaneously (one college I’m familiar with is looking to do just that). Assuming low correlation of false negative test results, the use of multiple different tests will greatly enhance test accuracy.
Not clear to me whether say 10% false negatives would be that terrible from a public health perspective. Remember that the percentage of positive tests amongst symptomatic individuals is now <5% in many parts of the country, and the percentage of currently infected people across the population as a whole is much less than 1%. If symptomatic people are already screened out and told not to fly (via temperature checks), it is only the asymptomatic and currently infectious people you need to worry about. Screening 90% of them out with a rapid test puts the likely percentage of infectious people flying at well below 0.1% and perhaps even below 0.01% of passengers. For reference there were 300K passengers in the US last Friday, up from fewer than 200K a few weeks ago (though far below the 2M per day traveling in normal circumstances). So at 0.01% (1 in 10000), that might be 30-200 infectious people in total per day who haven’t been caught by screening, depending on how much travel recovers.
Probably not enough for you to behave normally on the flight, but with both parties wearing masks the risk of infection is thought to be in the low single digits even for extended contacts. So the actual risk of the virus spreading significantly on planes then seems manageable. Whether you want to fly may be a different matter.
The problem with testing is negative doesn’t tell you much. It is a lot of money just to learn that you need to test again next day or two days later.