A Game Changer To Restart Travel

Today I’m talking about the big game changer that could be coming to restart travel, and it could be coming sooner than a vaccine. I’m talking about 15-minute Coronavirus antigen tests.

Now, they’ve been in the news recently because a lot of people are saying a 15-minute Coronavirus test is not as accurate as the PCR test, the test that maybe you’ve done — all the tests that you will do if you have symptoms. Now this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

If you can do a test and get results in 15 minutes, it’s not going to be as accurate as a test that takes 24 or 48 or even 72 hours to deliver results. But it’s still accurate. These tests are still working.

And even if they sometimes give a false negative, they can still 95% of the time show when someone is positive.

I was at the World Travel Market, the virtual World Travel Market last week, and rapid tests were promoted as the big hope from tourism ministers around the world. Because right now the general feeling is you can’t travel because if you do travel, you can spread Coronavirus.

Now, I don’t subscribe to this. How can travelers be responsible for spreading Coronavirus in places where Coronavirus already exists? I mean, it’s the same virus everywhere. So there’s just as good a chance you can catch COVID on your own street as on the other side of the world.

But I do get the point. No country wants to import more cases, especially if their numbers are going down. So what’s happened so far is all these countries say: “Right, we’ll just impose a blanket ban or quarantine. Anyone who comes, they can isolate for two weeks.”

We Need More Plain Sense

Yeah. Great. Completely destroys tourism. And it’s not just when you arrive, it’s quarantine when you go home.

I mean, say now somebody wants to travel from the UK to the Czech Republic. So, to land in the Czech Republic they quarantine for two weeks. And then when they go home to the UK, they’ll quarantine for another two weeks. I mean, imagine a nice weekend break. Let’s go to Prague the weekend, see the city, have some nice beers, enjoy the Pils and a walk across Charles bridge, nice weekend. It’s going to cost you four weeks in isolation.

So, blanket quarantine and blanket bounds. There’s no way that tourism can restart with this. So we need something that is a little more — not even innovative, just a little bit more plain sense.

Already this year there are quite a few countries doing things a little differently.

So countries like Kenya, Rwanda, now even Spain, are a little bit smarter than the UK. And they’ve said something that’s blindingly obvious to anyone who travels. “You can come into our country, if you are negative.” Brilliant. I mean, it’s so simple. If you come into this country and you don’t have Coronavirus then you can come in and you can travel.

And some countries are still “well, we can’t let people in, you know, they might be carrying the virus.” If you land in the UK today with a PCR test that says you’re negative, but you’ve come from Spain, you still have to isolate for two weeks. How mad is that?

There’s A Little Risk, But Let’s Move

But there are these countries and that is kind of driving tourism restart. And at the moment, they’re saying, well, you can come in and you can travel freely, but you’ll need to bring a negative PCR test. So yes, I mean, that’s going to be a private test. It’s going to cost you some money, but then you can enter and you can travel without this quarantine. Because if you’re negative, how can you be spreading?

And then I was speaking to someone the other day and actually a lot of people say to me “the test isn’t always accurate, and you might catch Coronavirus in the airport or on the plane, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

I mean, you can catch coronavirus in your supermarket as well. I mean, what is this? Let’s lock ourselves up forever and never see the sunlight. We are born to move. So yes, there’s a little risk, but let’s move.

The Advantage Of 15-minute Tests

Now, the problem with PCR tests is they’re only valid on the date you take them, which can be up to 72 hours before you fly.

Rapid tests are going to be different because you could do a 15-minute rapid test at the airport. Maybe on departure, even on arrival at the airport, you could do a 15-minute rapid test, wait in line, then prove your valid, up-to-date, innocence and non-spread of coronavirus.

And if countries want to be extra cautious, you could then be asked to isolate in a hotel for 48 or 72 hours, and then do a second test to absolutely prove you didn’t bring the virus with you. So the big question for me, and for all of you who love to travel is: how soon can we get these 15-minute antigen coronavirus tests out on the market?

And what they’re saying at World Travel Market is: first, we’re going to have these tests go into the general public as a means of controlling Coronavirus. We do more tests, we catch who’s got it.

And people can go to a pharmacy to get a test rather than having to stand in line, or call someone or go to a testing center.

So that’s going to be the first thing. And hopefully that is going to happen this year in a lot of countries, there are a lot of different companies developing these tests.

When that’s in place, what we’re going to see is countries saying, “yes, we accept that an antigen test is valid. It’s 95% accurate. So you can come in, provided you’ve got your 15-minute tests”. And that is going to make travel available to everyone again.

Keep Watching Out For It

That can really be “yes, I want to go somewhere. Well, as long as I don’t have the virus, I can travel there.” So you can travel with confidence. And if you do catch the virus, then unfortunately you don’t get to travel.

So this was at World Travel Market, they had all the tourism ministers from Jordan, from Sri Lanka, from Germany, from all over the world, saying, “as soon as we can get this, as fast as we can get these rapid tests, tourism can restart, we can open our country to travelers and you, as travelers are going to be able to enjoy your travels.”

So keep watching out for it, rapid tests, as soon as you see them, maybe grab yourself a couple because they are coming and they are going to help you travel more and travel now.