Learning From Alaska's Mistakes + One Airport Tests 160,000 Passengers Monthly

Learning From Alaska’s Mistakes + This Airport Tests 160,000 Passengers Monthly

We’ve mentioned before that a growing number of locations are including airport-based on-arrival and departure testing. Then too, we’ve often referred to the state of Alaska’s testing plan which previously included 3 options for arriving passengers. That’s all changed as of yesterday. In the meantime, Frankfurt has moved forward with on-airport testing, while London has postponed theirs. Dubai, at the same time, has moved to testing all incoming and outgoing passengers.

How on-arrival testing is working in Germany. 

Germany has implemented on-arrival/pre-departure testing at bustling Frankfurt Airport via their private-sector partner Centogene. For a fee of 59€ to 139€, tests results are returned within two to eight hours. Currently, we were told that 160,000 tests per month can be processed at Frankfurt. The airport also accepts pre-departure testing from other partners, in order to lessen the burden on airport testing. Centogene says they have “Partnered to offer Coronavirus testing at Frankfurt Airport via a Test Center in the immediate vicinity. This is an RT-PCR test… The detection is carried out by means of a throat swab.”

Dubai now requires testing of all passengers inbound and outbound.

The UAE has implemented mandatory testing for all incoming and outgoing passengers. Emirates says “From 1 August 2020, all passengers traveling to Dubai from any destination, including passengers connecting in Dubai, must have a negative COVID-19 test certificate to be accepted on the flight. The test must be taken a maximum of 96 hours before departure. This excludes children under the age of 12 and passengers who have a moderate or severe disability.”

London’s Heathrow Airport testing delayed.

The airport was to offer an example of new on-arrival, saliva-based testing in concert with private partner Boots/Walgreen’s. This means passengers were to be checked for COVID after landing at Heathrow and know within 24 hours their test results. Passengers would go to their place of isolation until results are obtained. The estimated cost was $187. At this time, however, the plan has not been implemented and we are not finding anything definitive about whether it will happen, and if so when.

Big changes in the state of Alaska testing program.

Starting yesterday, August 11, Governor Mike Dunleavy required that all visitors to Alaska present a negative result on a COVID-19 test performed within 72 hours prior to arrival. Alaska will now only accept negative results from tests taken before travel and visitors will no longer have on-arrival or 14-day quarantine options, according to the governor. For those arriving without test results, the state has not announced how they will be handled, which is to be revealed later. Apparently, only Alaska residents returning to the state will be able to test on arrival, although even that isn’t completely clear.

Previously, about one-third of Alaska arrivals tested before departure, more than one-third more obtained free tests on arrival, and the remainder went into quarantine.

Options for Hawaii COVID tests. 

Hawaii Governor Ige has said that when the state reopens, those who do not have their test results on arrival will be in isolation until they obtain negative test results. In that comment, it seemed to raise the question of whether more testing options might be included. Yet, the state has always maintained that there will be no on-arrival testing. That together with the apparently failed option in Alaska is not a good indication of on-arrival testing being part of Hawaii’s future plans. On-arrival testing has its own set of issues, including test availability and how long visitors will need to be in quarantine until they obtain results. How any of that could be supervised here in Hawaii is anyone’s guess.

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9 thoughts on “Learning From Alaska’s Mistakes + This Airport Tests 160,000 Passengers Monthly”

  1. LOL! Yeah, right. All of the places that have successfully implemented something have functional local governments and bureaucracies. And even then, in Germany, there are all sorts of problems with their testing regime. Today the backlog in Bavaria from one of the autobahn facilities is so bad that people will either be dead or better by the time they get their results back. Unfortunately, Ige can barely rev up his two brain cells long enough to walk and chew gum at the same time. That means this doesn’t end well for Hawaii either economically or epidemiologically. Any yet, Ige will probably get re-elected. Hilarious.

    Hawaii is getting punched in the face right now by a virus that’s gonna virus. People can sit in denial all they want, but eradicating a virus without a vaccine similar to that for polio is a pipe dream. Yet the chances of finding a polio-like vaccine for a coronavirus is silly. I think there will be a vaccine in the near future, but it will be like the flu vaccine and only show partial efficacy. Meaning COVID-19 is still gonna kill the people it would have anyway.

  2. Iceland provides testing on arrival for a fee. Alternative is 14 days quarantine. And then having tested, you are advised to socially distance for the first 5 days but you are free to otherwise carry on your life. But if you’re staying longer than 10 days you need to retest on day 4 to 6. This is provided free (or included in your first test fee), but you need to either arrange an appointment at a local facility or there is one walk-in centre in the city.
    They had eliminated community spread, but that is no longer as people have arrived, tested negative but were still incubating the disease and so have ended up developing symptoms a few days later.
    Iceland was looking like a nice safe place to visit, but is now being put on the red list of quarantine required locations for the rest of Europe.
    The UK has looked at the testing on arrival and also on day X approach, but has decided the risk of more entering the country is too great.
    I don’t think there are any real easy solutions to this, or countries around the world would have come up with them. But we will all just have to continue to do our part with social distancing. Unfortunately, once we let our guards down with friends and family, that’s when we’re most likely to get infected.

  3. Thank you for all the info. I am scheduled to fly in on a sunday, there is no way I can get my results on the weekend. Also I am finding it hard to even get a test if you don’t have symptoms. Do you have any suggestions to were I would go for a travel covid test?

    1. Hi Lisa.

      The state has not confirmed this. We hope to hear in the next few days. Otherwise quarantine remains in effect until further notice.

      Aloha.

  4. Hawaii needs to contract with a major national pharmacy to provide test results that aheard to Hawaii test requirements ( 72 or 94 hrs). This will simply make travel to Hawaii a easy task not a huge unknown ordeal.

  5. thanks for the update……looking forward to 9/1……its either kauai or somewhere else, but I prefer kauai.

  6. Does Hawaii really only allow NAAT test results (as per the official Regulation)? Those are super hard to obtain.

    1. I’ve been told it’s the same as a PRC test. Is it indeed different? I couldn’t find anywhere in our entire state that did an NAAT test.

    2. Ken B… Posted about my concern re NAAT as well and then, after searching numerous times over the last month, found this… it appears that PCR test is just one of a number of NAAT tests. Perhaps the use of NAAT is to prevent people from thinking an Antibody Test is acceptable which it is not.

      Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) – including nested (n), quantitative (q) or real-time reverse transcription (RT) PCR), loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), and quantitative nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (QT-NASBA) – are among the key NAATs developed to detect malaria.

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