Travel Questions

Is there any exemption for PCR tests if returning from France after a short break?

Simon Calder answers your questions on Channel ferry crossings, visiting the USA and the Eurostar

Saturday 28 August 2021 00:18 BST

For any trip of four days or less, it is best to test before you leave (PA)

Q We were due to take the Newhaven ferry to Dieppe on Friday morning for one night, returning at 6pm on Saturday. We are both double jabbed but had no time to book and take PCR tests in France before our return to the UK. So we had to cancel. Is there an exemption for short breaks?

Ipen

A Sorry to hear you missed your trip to lovely Dieppe. It is one of my favourite French ports, especially for the amazing seafood at A La Marmite Dieppoise. On a two-day trip you can also visit nearby Rouen (just 44 minutes by train) and dip into its rich history.

Why am I telling you this? Because I very much hope you can reschedule. Taking a short break is not entirely without problems and expense, but a couple of days in Normandy should be perfectly manageable if you follow the right procedure.

Given the confusing and often contradictory advice on international travel, your misinterpretation of the “test-to-travel-back” rule is entirely understandable. It does not have to be a PCR test, and it does not have to be taken abroad.

For any quick trip of four days or less, it is best to take this test before you leave the UK. This is perfectly within the rules. Assuming you are returning to the UK on a Saturday, you can take the test on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. A local pharmacy in your home town should oblige with a cheap and rapid lateral flow test.

With the negative test certificate, the red tape is far from over: for admission to France, you must complete a déclaration sur l’honneur form swearing you have no coronavirus symptoms and have had no contact with confirmed cases in the preceding two weeks, and produce proof of vaccination – most easily done by adding your NHS app certification to the French Tous Anti Covid app.

The final lap: book a post-arrival test for the UK, which this time must be PCR, and taken on the day of return or one of the two following days. With the reference number, you can then complete a passenger locator form for your return to Newhaven. And relax.

There isn’t much enthusiasm to allow tourists to enter America (Getty)

Q My daughter and family live in California. We cancelled our June trip because the US border was not open and I suspect our rebooked flights on 1 September will have to be cancelled too. With an expensive Covid test being required 72 hours before departure, I am not sure what to do. Are you aware if the US border will be open by next Wednesday? As I write that question, I realise how ridiculous it sounds but – as you can tell – I am desperate to see my daughter and little grandson.

Also, we have been double jabbed with the AstraZeneca vaccine and I have read that the US will not accept us because AZ has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Are we stymied on both counts?

Name supplied

A Sorry to hear that you are one of hundreds of thousands of people with loved ones across the Atlantic. As you know, visitors from the UK (and much of the European Union) were banned from travel to the US in March 2020 through a presidential proclamation by Donald Trump. The prohibition on direct arrivals was extended by his successor, Joe Biden.

Sadly I can detect no enthusiasm in the White House for opening up to European visitors any time soon. The US travel industry can survive without us, so there is no economic imperative. And with tragic Covid fatalities continuing in the US – yesterday another 1,285 victims, the highest daily death toll for five months – there is no appetite for opening up. In particular, the popular state of Florida has hit a new record of 26,203 daily cases.

A “transatlantic travel task force” was set up in June by the UK and US governments. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said its purpose was “to help facilitate the reopening of transatlantic travel”. But in the past 11 weeks it has not demonstrated any visible success.

If your daughter and grandson are able to travel, they can fly to the UK without the need to quarantine on arrival, so long as your daughter has been fully vaccinated. Alternatively, you could spend 14 days outside the UK (for example in Mexico or the Caribbean) to “launder” your British status and travel on from there to the US.

By the time we are allowed to travel west again, I don’t expect the AstraZeneca issue to be a concern – I predict the US will accept them as an alternative to self-isolation.

Simon assumed the Belgian government would be happy with people who want to change trains and leave the country briskly (PA)

Q I want to travel to Germany on Eurostar via Brussels. The Eurostar website says that I have to comply with “entry to Belgium conditions”, which seem to suggest quarantine and a test on day one in Belgium – and waiting for a negative test before being able to transit through to Germany.

Is that right? I am an EU citizen but resident in UK and have been double vaccinated.

Donna C

A I feared, initially, that this was yet another example of why I reluctantly suggest that travellers fly direct to their destination if the alternative is transiting through a third country. The Foreign Office travel advice for Belgium warns that vaccinated visitors must “take a test on either day one or two of arrival and quarantine until you receive a negative result” – which of course is absurd in the context of a half-hour connection at Brussels-Midi station to an express bound for Germany.

My view was that the Belgian government would be perfectly happy with people who simply want to change trains and leave the country briskly. That matches the policy of the UK: any quarantine obligation ends (or does not really start) if you travel straight out of Britain immediately after you arrive. However, I wanted to back up this assumption.

After considerable searching I have discovered buried deep in a Belgian government website (info-coronavirus.be/en/faq): “For short-stay travel (less than 48 hours) in Belgium ... quarantine is not mandatory.” There is a box on the Belgian passenger locator form to tick to this effect.

Mark Smith, the international rail guru known as The Man in Seat Sixty-One, was simultaneously discussing this very subject. He said: “So what have we concluded? You’ll probably be fine transiting Belgium in less than 48 hours. But the information is so badly written with so many conflicting clauses and no explicit concrete examples, that no one is quite sure. Even the Belgians who wrote it, probably …”

His comments apply to a vast amount of official regulations surrounding travel in the time of coronavirus.

Austria is an outlier in specifying a ‘no later than’ date for vaccinations as well as having one ‘no earlier than’ (Reuters)

Q Is there a move in many countries to have a vaccination expiry date? Austria has lifted restrictions for Brits, subject to either negative tests or for the double jabbed (as long as the second jab was administered no later than 270 days on the day of arrival).

My second jab was in April. For a planned skiing trip in January next year it will be 275 days old, so it looks like I will be back to testing. If this is going to be the new norm it presents another complication and barrier to travel. Would a booster jab in the autumn make it OK as long as it is not too close to the day of departure?

Alan W

A Many countries say, approximately, “allow a couple of weeks from your second jab for it to take effect”. But I know of no other that says, effectively, “we don’t trust Covid jabs beyond nine months”. Austria is an outlier in specifying a “no later than” date for vaccinations as well as one “no earlier than”.

The Foreign Office travel advice expresses the conditions for Austria as this: “For double-shot vaccines, you must show that you have received the first injection more than 21 days but no more than 90 days before arrival, or the second injection no more than 270 days before arrival.”

For most prospective British visitors, the key part is the second jab timeframe. At the moment it is academic, because to fall foul of the rule you would need to have had your second jab on 28 November 2020, which applies to no one at all. But if the rule stays the same, a UK adult who has their second jab on (say) 30 April 2021 will see their vaccination status in the eyes of Austria rendered void on 25 January 2022.

A booster jab would not be relevant because the current rules are only concerned with one or two jabs (if you have a single dose vaccine, the same 270 day rule applies). But I cannot see this same regulation persisting into 2022 and the new ski season in the present form because that would steadily erode the number of prospective customers.

I predict that either further medical research will reassure the Austrians about the efficacy of vaccines or – as you say – you may receive a booster at the same time as legislation is updated in Austria to take account of the extra jab. Ask me again at Christmas.