Travelling with Covid

[PatricksMother]

I am currently on holiday with friends. We have been away for nearly two weeks and we're due to go home on Friday.

I started feeling a bit unwell last night and this evening tested positive for covid. I wouldn't normally test, but one of my companions is still very nervous about catching covid and insisted I tested. I am now self-isolating in my room at her insistence.

On Friday we will be catching a ferry home and it's likely to be very busy due to the time of year. I will then leave my friends and catch a (pre-booked) train home.

My covid-nervous friend is appalled that I intend to travel and thinks I should find a hotel room somewhere and self-isolate until I get a negative result.

The house we are staying in is booked for someone else from Friday.

Even if I was able to find a hotel with a vacant room, I would struggle to afford it and may have to pay again for the ferry and train. I am also due to return to work on Saturday and my employer will expect me to work if I am well enough. They would not be impressed if I told them I was still away.

I haven't had covid since 2021 and I thought people weren't testing or self-isolating any more. I feel a bit under the weather, but not too ill to function normally.

So am I being unreasonable to travel on Friday, or is my friend right to be appalled?

It’s more severe for non immuno compromised people than other colds or flu so I can’t imagine it would be any better for immuno compromised people.

Your friend is being ridiculous.
Stop isolating in your room, she can isolate if she's that's worried! You've been around each other for days anyway.
And travel home, I flew home from Spain with it last year, I likely got it on the flight out and needed to be home. There are no restrictions, if she's nervous that's on her to manage not you

@PatricksMother

Would your travel insurance not cover any additional costs?

I am not unfit to travel, so no.

This!! There's no point testing if you're going to carry on as normal regardless!

What Country are you travelling from ? Just because the UK has rules to carry on, other Countries don't. For example, Ireland has completely different rules for COVID.

I am not aware of any country that has mandatory rules that mean we can't "carry on".

The rules in the UK and Ireland are not completely different. Both countries offer similar guidance about avoiding other people and reducing spread. Neither country imposes mandatory restrictions.

We are travelling from France which, like the UK and Ireland has no mandatory restrictions on travelling with covid.

Will you wear a mask when you travel?

Indeed. I shouldn't have tested. The only reason I tested was because I didn't think I had covid and wanted to reassure my covid-nervous friend. Unfortunately, the test was positive and she was not reassured.

As we have all been living in close proximity for the last two weeks, she will be lucky if she has escaped the dreaded lurgy. I am looking forward to seeing how rigidly she follows her own rules.

My feeling off-colour friend has not and will not test but - like me - will take reasonable steps to avoid passing her germs to others.

I will take one with me. Whether I wear it will depend on how easily I can avoid close proximity with other people.

She sounds more like an emotional drain than a friend! Don’t holiday with her again.

Wear a mask and don't sit with your friends.

I disagree. There are other viruses that are severe for otherwise healthy people.

For me - an immunocompromised person- Covid is on the same level as other illnesses. It’s as risky to me as anything else.

Isolate as much as you can, at least please wear a mask if you really can't avoid travelling, but that should be a decent one like FFP3 and not a home made cotton one or a blue surgical one. The reason I say this is we've both caught it from a plane journey, both fit healthy adults, still in bed feeling very ill even one week later. We're self employed and have lost so much money as it's hit us both so badly. We tried to work but we're far to ill, but worse than that we've missed an important health appointment that DH has waited a year to get. This bout of Covid absolutely nothing like a cold or flu. It costs almost nothing to wear a mask and you might just save someone from feeling like this, or worse. 😷

Ireland has different guidelines to the UK. We have been informed not to just carry on. We never were, we have always been asked to isolate. Our ICU is filling up with the latest variant, there's currently 24 in there. There's 365 in hospital 60 which were admitted overnight, while those numbers seem low to others you have to remember we're a small Country with not many hospitals.

While we don't have travel restrictions like before, it sort of goes hand in hand with the isolation advice.

You are not allowed to work if you test positive, children can't go into school if they have symptoms or test positive so yes, totally different advice to the UK, according to here you all can carry on as normal and knowingly spread covid .

I do totally get when people don't want to isolate and want to carry on as normal, if I didn't have a seriously disabled dd with many health conditions or a DH who wasn't imunosupressed, I probably would feel angry too at having to isolate or not able to live my life, but unfortunately there are some very, very sick people in this world and we have to try not knowingly spread it to them, so I think I'd go down the route of a really good mask and not be near people. I couldn't sit with people knowing I was positive breathing over them .

This is not a cold for some, it might be for you but in my house like many others it means hospital admission. People say sure you're around people with colds and flu but colds we can manage but usually last a month, we're not usually around people with the flu because they're too ill to get out of bed but that's not to say they haven't had it, and 99% of the time ends up with vomiting from coughing resulting in dehydration and a hospital admission for IV saline and antibiotics, of course this all has a knock on affect with epilepsy meds as they're been vomited up.

I get this isn't your problem and me like many parents and carers spend our days trying to keep our families alive. We do worry and we do take extra precautions because we can't trust everyone to think of others besides themselves.

These are our current guidelines

Really sorry to hear others have been really unwell with Covid lately.

We have just flown home, a few days after our friends who were holidaying with us in the same apartment. They had mild symptoms and tested positive on their return (they only had access to test kit at home). We only found out their test results when we got home and, even though we were all asymptomatic, we tested out of curiosity the afternoon we landed... We were all strongly positive.

So we had been positive and asymptomatic and totally unaware of it on the flight home. Perhaps we didn't spread it as not sniffing, coughing or sneezing... but... we were definitely breathing/talking. I'm guessing many people must have caught it on the flight out and spread it on flight back without being in the slightest bit aware. It must be fairly endemic now on planes.

I think the best you can do is mask up, try to keep yourself to yourself or outside on deck.

*deck!

Why did you test?! Testing means you have to deal with the consequences! I expect loads are travelling with Covid they just don’t know!
Just wear a mask if your friend insists and carry on!

You should not be going to a place of work if you have Covid.

I'd be travelling but wear a mask.
Are you in a car ferry and so in close proximity to your friends?

As I said. These are guidelines, not mandatory rules and not dissimilar to the guidelines in the UK and elsewhere. No country that I'm aware of has mandatory covid rules in place.

UK guidance has always been to isolate if possible, but like in Ireland, it's often neither possible nor desirable.

Your assertion that the rules in Ireland are completely different is not true. If I was staying in Ireland instead of France I would be under no obligation to act differently.

I’m also still very nervous about covid due to what happened to my parents. Many people have been tragically affected by the virus and don’t have the opinion that it’s no worse than a cold. It must also be very hard for people who have medical conditions which means that covid is likely to badly affect them.
Having said that, I think you should travel but take basic, necessary precautions. A good, well fitting mask - FFP2 and the like. Definitely not one of the useless surgical types that gape at the sides. Also anti bacterial hand gel and sit outside or by an open window if you can or near a door. Also, stay away from people if possible. Realise that may be impossible but if you’re wearing a mask that should help.
All the best OP. Hope you get home ok and feel better soon.

But you're planning to go into work with COVID, you can't here.

Everyone is always saying on here to carry on if you feel ok. You can't here, you have to isolate.

I don't live or work in Ireland, but even if I did I would not have to isolate. There is no mandatory obligation to test or isolate in Ireland. If you don't feel unwell and don't test, there is no reason why you wouldn't be allowed to go to work in Ireland.

The guidelines you have posted are advice and guidance and substantially similar to everywhere else.

I'm wondering if you don't understand the difference between guidelines and mandatory restrictions. Guidelines tell you what you should (ideally) do, but there is no legal obligation to comply. Mandatory restrictions are law. If you don't comply, you can be prosecuted.

There are no mandatory covid restrictions in any country that I know of, including Ireland.

I understand you want it to be different and you would like the guidelines to be law as a minority of people everywhere seem to, but the fact remains that the world has moved on and nations' economies, including Ireland's, can't afford to continue mandating covid restrictions.

As I said before, if I was staying in Ireland instead of France I wouldn't act any differently. I would be travelling home tomorrow and I wouldn't be breaking any laws.

Your friend is being absurd, but I would probably wear a mask, or at least go and stand on deck on the ferry, just to be considerate. As for the train, well the best you can do is mask up and travel. No one is expected to self-isolate when they have Covid any more.

I have a feeling the majority of Irish people aren't testing anymore though (I'm Irish). Lots of people just don't want to know, don't want to deal with any consequences. They're on here too.

I do test but fear I'm in the minority. I'm a fan of taking reasonable precautions to protect other people if you can.