U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international air passengers

Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by wzy on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:20PM (#25752926)

This will now place a strain on the testing facilities of small countries (islands) that are a popular destination of American tourists.

In Jamaica, every lab that has been approved to conduct the PCR test has been overwhelmed by a flood a Canadian tourists who now need a negative PCR test result to return home. Mind you, smaller countries have been having an uphill battle with procuring the reagents needed for the PCR tests because countries like the US is grabbing up everything COVID related, and not using them.

Had the US implemented these measures 9 months ago, the entire world would have looking at the tail-end of this pandemic, instead of waiting for the US to catchup with what every other country considers as a best practice.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by vinay427 on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:22PM (#25752970)

Every other country? Have you looked at the recent COVID-19 case and death rates in much of western Europe? Many of those countries, one of which I live in (which still doesn't require testing arrival passengers), are still changing their policies on incoming travelers with respect to quarantining and testing. There isn't some global consensus that the US is blind to.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by wzy on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:39PM (#25753251)

I am glad you picked up on the substantive point of my argument.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by vinay427 on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:43PM (#25753301)

It's this part that I'm responding to, which appears to be one of the main points that you made:

> Had the US implemented these measures 9 months ago, the entire world would have looking at the tail-end of this pandemic

I don't see how that's true given the situation in western Europe as well as several other countries and obviously the US.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by danielfoster on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:28PM (#25753054)

I don’t know about other islands but I’m in Aruba at the moment and you can get a PCR test in 8 hours. I imagine those days will soon be over.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by wzy on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:36PM (#25753204)

We have 2 private labs that can handle PCR tests and the turn-around is 24-48 hours, best case. Now, 1 of the 2 is booked out till February.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by raldi on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @03:21PM (#25752943)

That's not a bug; it's a feature.

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