Tag Archives for coronavirus.
The original Covid-19 outbreak may have been nearly 40 times worse than official statistics suggest. The Wuhan airport re-opened in early April 2020 as a big show of Chinese success at containing Covid-19. They also put on a big show of disinfection, even though the airport had been closed for ten weeks.
Now they’re facing Delta, and transportation in and out of Wuhan is again cut off.
f you manage a resort hotel in Mexico, most of your guests may be coming from the United States. They need a negative Covid-19 test to fly home. Making testing convenient has been key to attracting guest. Hotels in Mexico – whose business depended on it – made testing easy and often included with a room booking. As a result business has boomed.
But if you’re running a hotel, what test do you get for your guests? Hotels want tests that come back negative.
The CDC is announcing today that fully vaccinated people should wear masks again in indoor public settings, because of spread of the Delta variant. People aren’t going to comply. However this change makes an extension of the federal transportation mask mandate more likely.
The U.S. has kept its land borders with Canada and Mexico closed to non-essential traffic, even as Americans flock to vacation in Mexico in record numbers (American Airlines says they’re looking for any airport they don’t currently fly to with a paved runway) and even as Canada announced its re-opening to Americans and others.
The U.S. has also continued to ban travelers who’ve been in China, Iran, the European Schengen area, U.K. and Ireland, Brazil, South Africa or India in the prior 14 days.
While there has been significant discussion of when the U.S. would lift its restrictions, but it appears that may now be off the table.
Usually when we talk about fake Covid-19 tests for travel it’s buying a forged test (sometimes to save money on testing), or just going in search of a negative test. Some resorts in Mexico, Caribbean, and Latin America return test results – seemingly always negative – instantaneously, making one wonder whether any testing is really being done.
However in Indonesia one man took fake Covid tests for travel to a new level when he donned a burqa to impersonate his wife, who tested negative.
Travelers are banned from entering the U.S. if in the prior 14 days they’ve been in China, Iran, the European Schengen area, U.K. and Ireland, Brazil, South Africa or India. That’s true even though the U.S. requires testing of everyone entering by air; if the traveler has had a full course of an mRNA vaccine; and is coming from a place with far less Covid-19 than the U.S.
This makes no sense. Americans can go to Europe and they can return – in some cases even if they’re unvaccinated. But vaccinated Europeans can’t fly to the U.S. And this is somehow for our protection?
Here most places have re-opened. There’s an expectation that many businesses will return to the office in the fall. Schools are expected to be open. Already leisure travel has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and in some places has exceeded it. But is this state of affairs going to last?
When leisure travel tapers in the fall it won’t yet be replaced by business travel. And spread of the Delta variant amongst unvaccinated populations without immunity from prior infection could lead to real challenges for the industry.
Australia, like several island nations, won the first phase of the pandemic. They managed to contain the virus through strict lockdowns and border restrictions, and for much of the last year and a half life has been relatively normal. Now they’re losing the long phase, and the nation’s Prime Minister laid out a re-opening plan that could stretch years. I do not expect it to take nearly as long.
Cathay Pacific carried an average of just 774 passengers per day in May. Only around 2000 passengers per day used the Hong Kong airport. That’s only 1% of pre-pandemic volume. As a result, Cathay Pacific has just one lounge open – The Wing First Class lounge.
The Wing first class lounge joins Priority Pass effective Monday, June 21.
United Airlines is running a sweepstakes giving away free travel to people that have been vaccinated. But they won’t consider someone getting AstraZeneca shots to be vaccinated. Anyone who took AstraZeneca needs to follow the same mail-in route to enter as a vaccine refusenik.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
