Flying England to Ireland - pcr help!

[Ettie]

Hi all. My sister is flying from England to Ireland in Aug. She's fully vac but DC (14&15) will need pcr tests. Issue is they fly at 7am on a Wed, and from what we can figure out, results take 48 hours, so it cuts it too fine for them to be tested in person on mon morn. Has anyone experience of this, what's the best route to take? We haven't seen each other in a year and a half so very apprehensive about the hurdle! Thanks all.

F

Find somewhere that does testing on a Sunday?

There are plenty of places doing same day tests as well.

You can’t use the NHS ones for this (some people have tried and refused boarding apparently). What my parents did is bought a private ‘pre-departure’ PCR test (your sister may want to also book a pre-departure one for the other way of it required). It was sent to them in the post. They got it through Randox and how it worked was - they took it and then packaged it in the enclosed paid envelope and put it in a Randox ‘drop box’ before 3.30pm. On all occasions (they did 4 tests each as amber country) they received the results the following evening. This is a 24/7 service so no issue with a Sunday. I’m sure other companies that provide a similar service will work the same way. I hope you have a lovely time with your sister

And can I ask is a RT-PCR test the same as a PCR test?

Ryanair website says "Children aged 11 or under will not require any pre-departure tests to travel into Ireland, Children aged 12-17 will be required to present a pre-departure negative RT-PCR taken in previous 72 hours before arrival"

but most of the private tests refer to "PCR" as opposed to "RT-PCR"?

like this

"Get a private COVID-19 PCR swab test at Boots & get your results the next day*"

Gosh it’s not very easy to find this out! However see this photo which suggests all ‘PCR’ Covid tests are actually RT-PCR Tests.