travelling from the uk to the us during a pandemic when they change the covid testing to twenty four hours.

to say i’ve never been more stressed about going away for a month+ break is an understatement. Not only was it fairly last minute to actually pull off i tried to do this during a pandemic not completely knowing if the countries i’d be going in and out would be even open and what kind of testing would be required.

I guess it’s considered lucky that here in the uk i can get a free pack of seven tests from NHS for no money whatsoever and self test at the tiny sign of any cough or colds. I tested many times and always hit negative, the pressure of making sure you are negative before going away is intense, you almost have to go into hermit mode — i’m sure you remember those early months in year one of covid 19, no vaccines, everyone worried sick of what it entailed.

so yeah i spent quite a bit of money on covid 19 testing as the testing windows were changing all the time, at the time of flying out you literally had to have a test result that was twenty four hours previously taken which stressed me out enough because they were not clear on when that twenty four hours should start, when i land or whatever — i made sure that i had two tests, a 48hrs and a 24hrs just to be sure and booked my “day 2” for when i was coming back.

you have to have the reference number of your booked day 2 test for use in your uk passenger locator form so it’s important you get it before flying out

all tests and everything all locked down and with all the paperwork i thought i would need i was away, my first connecting flight was really darn windy and i think i slept for the first part of it so i woke up with the plane rattling and banging as we landed in crazy winds.

i gotta remember about what time of year i fly, this was literally a reaction to not seeing my partner for over 900+ days and so as soon as the red list was taken off i was ready to go, i had booked my flight months and months in advance in the “hope” that things would clear.

the airports were pretty quiet if i’m honest, felt like landing in a dream, i remember arriving on what felt like a really quick flight but i guess i passed out a lot on the plane, my blue mask and other snood wrapped around my face. I wondered if i’d get any sleep on the plane because of the mask and while it was uncomfortable i found myself breathing more shallow.

i couldn’t wait to get the mask of me once i touched down and we managed to plan accordingly and got ourselves a really sweet spot to stay, ordered a thai meal in and had a quick drink of whisky to calm the days travelling nerves. It was all a lot and then obviously it wasn’t, kinda weird to see your person after such a long time + all the nonsense of the pandemic between it.

as people you could tell we had changed. still the same in many ways but both going out into a world we used to know was a bit of a wake up call. what was life like after what we effectively called “the burn” (aka hat trip to star trek discovery here) we got stories from local business owners and felt like we were aliens in a different land. I took time out to chill, relax and kick back and we do the usual couples routine of food shopping and watching tv shows and movies.

a few weeks before coming back i was getting a little concerned about covid 19 testing again, i’d hoped that i’d be able to get a test and return that in twenty four hours to have the paperwork but even the more professional services (like Vault) were starting to show returning rates of up to a week — obviously for getting back into the uk this was not going to work.

places were starting to be selling out tests, then the covid numbers because of the omnicron variant that i seemed to have escaped a few weeks before started to hit the shores, numbers in the millions and the next day a million and a half. it was getting impossible to get a test unless you went into the city (nyc) and booked one of those same day crazy 400/500 dollar ones.

luckily (and i mean luckily) they scrapped the requirement for a test coming back into the uk maybe a few days before i needed to come back. we celebrated that one but it’s certainly something to be mindful about — i’d certainly look at making sure you have a test from one of these countries already waiting for you when you land so it’s a quick thing to send back but also check your airlines app for updated information and see what other third party apps they are using for verification, those worked really well actually.

humble x