An atypical post for With Varying Frequency, as the XYL made a priority Elder-care trip to England, which was booked immediately when the British Government announced elimination of the ten-day isolation quarantine when arriving in England from the USA. What follows was my running notes as posted in a travel forum. Despite the forum’s claimed large traveler participation, as the XYL left immediately on the rule change, we were the first timers in the process.
As the rules, apps, and experience will evolve, they are offered as an accounting of the XYL’s August 2021 trip alone. I am offering this here as many of us travel, and some might be contemplating travel for radio opportunities or DXpedition reasons. Worth thinking about – and knowing if you break the rules or mess it up, you can be fined in the English case some thing like $7,000/person, put into quarantine until you can be sent home and have your future UK access put into question.
This trip was a success though worrisome, and required a couple extra tests at the end as the XYL’s host was Pinged by the NHS (National Health Service) App during the period they were working together to help the XYL’s parents. So out of caution a couple extra tests were taken.
73
Steve
K9ZW
Navigating the UK Gov website, Airline Website and juggling all the documents is a bit of a tricky deal.
Not all are properly updated as of Monday August 2nd 2021, the selfie photograph taking part of the UK Gov site has a mind of its
own, and it is hard to answer some of the questions as they are already outdated.Expect this will get better as the updates to websites are completed/harmonized.
Some really silly stuff like the email from the UK Gov has a pdf attachment that cannot be opened on latest iOS USA configured
phones, but can be opened once to save it to a desktop computer and then resend it back to yourself. I simply don’t have time to dig
into that error, as the workaround takes longer to write up to share than do for yourself.Current rule extra costs up to the point of travel (so far):
- About 14 hours of extra time spent.
- Local C-19 test (out of pocket unknown)
- Day-2 C-19 test – best deal found about UKP 85 (uses DHL delivery)
- Extra Insurance (our choice, again we use EA+) – $105/pp
Expected additional costs:
- Less than 4 hours anticipated for test and games
- Pre-Return C-19 test – another UKP 85 (unless a better deal is found)
That is if everything goes well.
Summary – about an extra $400-500 per person C-19 “drag” for 3 tests and extra insurance.
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