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When Will The Government Review Covid Travel Restrictions?
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Citizenship is what counts.... your passport
That ArriveCan app is no snap..... whew!
and it asks for countries visited in the last 14 days
That ArriveCan app is no snap..... whew!
and it asks for countries visited in the last 14 days
Bob. I would hazard a guess and say it applies to Canadians and all fully vaccinated foreigners. A 15 minute rapid PCR test is still required no more than one day before you arrive in Canada. You may be subject to random testing when you arrive.
The CBC announced today that the last testing requirement for Canadians returning from abroad ends in April. No testing, PCR or Rapid, required after that. People arriving from abroad may be subject to random testing at Canadian airports. Vax passes still required.
Fantastic news. We still paid about $40 each for an Antigen test at Referencia for the four of us upon return.
They put a green sticker on our passports to wave us through the random tests. I was a bit nervous that we would have had a positive on arrival to YYZ. It would have meant we couldn’t catch our connection the next day or being stuck there. At the very least renting a car and driving home to quarantine.
Not having to worry about test results upon arrival, at all, will be very nice.
April 01st is the date the testing restriction ends according to a CBC interview this evening.
Airlines are gearing up for summer travel but the high price of jet fuel has doubled the cost of flights. Three weeks ago mid April flight to the DR was $650 return for me. Same flight now $1200.
Also POP airport is supposed to be closing last week of April for up to five weeks for main runway rebuild. Can anyone confirm this?
Airlines are gearing up for summer travel but the high price of jet fuel has doubled the cost of flights. Three weeks ago mid April flight to the DR was $650 return for me. Same flight now $1200.
Also POP airport is supposed to be closing last week of April for up to five weeks for main runway rebuild. Can anyone confirm this?
It's all very well to remove the restrictions. But pandemics, especially world pandemics like Covid 19, do not go away quickly. We still have a decade to live with the restriction.
I read that the airport would close from the 9th of May till the 20th of May. But 12 days seems a bit short to resurface the runway.
That’s sounds about right. The works, as I understand it, is phase one of a runway extension to accommodate larger aircraft.
That's just three weeks after Semana Santa. Interesting.
I wonder if they plan on starting/doing any additional "work"
within the surrounding area.
I don’t know. I’ve never seen one in the skies approaching Gregorio Luperon airport or on the tarmac there. 747 passenger carrying aircraft are diminishing in numbers. Many have been converted to freight or freight/passenger combos. The Airbus 380 introduction was a flop. The day of the passenger carrying jumbos is gone. Twin engine, single aisle, high passenger volume type aircraft is what the airlines are ordering now.
I’m guessing the airport wants to accommodate the new generation of bigger Boeing/Airbus more fuel efficient aircraft, especially those with extended range arriving from overseas destinations. Aircraft like 787’s, 321 ER’s etc.
Punta Cana‘s runway length is 3100 metres. POP’s is 3081 metres. Santo Domingo airport is 3353 metres (11,000 feet), the largest in the DR. Two mile minimum strips give airports the ability to accommodate a large range of fully loaded heavy’s. Especially in minimal take off and landing conditions.
CR. The runway definitely needs resurfacing and, even fully loaded 737’s have to push hard to get out of Gregorio Luperon airport on a really hot day. I expect phase one to be extension work in May followed later by phase two, resurfacing the strip during low season, July-August.
The government is pushing hard to increase tourism potential. Pedernales is the latest initiative. This appears to be just one of their unannounced initiatives. There is also plenty of room for infrastructure development around Gregorio Luperon airport. A hotel connected to the airport would be nice for those in transit or held up for weather delays or aircraft mechanical problems.
Meanwhile the USA is trying to figure out what will stick to the wall:
Good morning. The U.S. may soon run out of Covid money. But that’s not the only problem. |
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Dollars and knowledge |
The short-term and long-term flaws with the country’s current Covid-19 policy are quite different. |
In the short term, the main problem is a lack of demand for Covid vaccines and treatments: Not enough people are trying to get them. In the longer term — by the second half of this year — the bigger problem may end up being a lack of supply, especially if cases surge again. |
I think this distinction has gotten lost in some of the public discussion. Yesterday, President Biden called for additional Covid funding, after Congress had left out such money from its most recent spending bill because of a disagreement over how to pay for it. |
“We need to secure additional supply now,” Biden said in a brief speech, shortly before receiving his second booster shot onstage. “We can’t wait until we find ourselves in the midst of another surge to act. It’ll be too late.” |
Biden is right that the lack of funding creates problems. To ensure an adequate supply of vaccines and treatments later this year, the government probably needs to take action soon. Democrats and Republicans have been negotiating over a possible deal this week. |
But the potential funding shortfall is nowhere near the entire problem. A lack of money is not preventing many Americans from getting vaccinated or getting valuable treatments right now. Even if Congress does pass more Covid funding, the country will still face a problem that is more about information and persuasion than dollars. |
Shots in arms |
For months, the United States has been awash in Covid vaccine shots, and many Americans would benefit from getting one. About one-quarter of adults remain unvaccinated, while roughly another quarter are vaccinated but not boosted, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A booster shot sharply reduces the chances of severe Covid illness, especially for vulnerable people like the elderly and immunocompromised. |
I know that last point may sound counterintuitive. The elderly and immunocompromised, even if boosted, face a higher risk of severe illness than a healthy, younger person. But a booster shot still reduces the risk more for a vulnerable person than for an average person. It’s a common dynamic in medicine: Treatments tend to be most valuable for the most vulnerable even if they do not eliminate risk. |
Despite the huge value of additional vaccine shots, many Americans simply aren’t getting one. The number of shots given per day, including both initial doses and boosters, has fallen to the lowest level since the beginning of the mass vaccination campaign, in early 2021. |
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What might help? |
Employer and customer mandates would probably nudge more people to get initial shots. Previous employer mandates have generally caused more people to get vaccinated and only a tiny share to quit or be fired. But mandates have fallen out of fashion. Even some politically liberal places, like New York City and Washington, D.C., have been dropping theirs recently. |
Boosting more people seems as if it should be more feasible, because it involves people who have already received a shot. Still, boosters are lagging. Many Americans seem confused about how much a booster shot matters. |
The scientific evidence suggests that everybody who is eligible should get a first booster shot. A second booster shot — now available to people 50 and older, among others — may also make sense, although the benefits appear smaller. And if you are boosted and have already had Omicron, you probably don’t need another booster yet, Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research notes (as part of his helpful overview of the evidence). |
Treatments |
The story is similar with both Evusheld (a drug that appears to boost immunity among the immunocompromised) and post-infection treatments that reduce the chance of severe illness. They are widely available, yet many people remain unaware of them. |
Many doctors also seem uncertain how and when to prescribe them. “Doctors are beginning to use this,” a Biden administration official told me, “but it takes a while for things to get absorbed in medical practice.” |
Biden yesterday announced a new federal website — Covid.gov — where people can search for pharmacies near them that have both Evusheld and the treatments. I found most parts of it simple to use. But I also thought that Rob Relyea, a Microsoft engineer who has become an advocate for the immunocompromised, made a good critique on Twitter: The Evusheld information is too hard to find. |
The bottom line is that Americans would benefit from hearing a series of clear, repeated messages: |
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As Biden said yesterday, “America has the tools to protect people.” |
What’s next |
If more people become aware of the treatments, however, some of them are likely to run low later this year. And if the federal government waits until then to act, it may discover that other countries have bought the available supply. “You can’t snap your fingers and buy the stuff,” the Biden administration official told me. |
Already, the administration has reduced shipments of one kind of treatment — monoclonal antibodies — that it is sending to states. It has also said it would cut back on new orders of Evusheld in the next several days. |
A Covid bill would likely cost $10 billion to $15 billion, or less than 0.25 percent of the annual federal budget. Congressional Republicans have said that the money should be diverted from another area, rather than add to the deficit. My colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covers the pandemic from Washington, said Congress was likely to agree on a funding source soon, perhaps before lawmakers leave for their April recess. But nobody knows for sure. |
Related: |
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Windy. I’m surprised our Canadian government like the DR government is remaining wide open and saying our hospitals can cope with the rise in infections from the new Omicron BA-2 variant. They are saying it is as infectious or more infectious as the original Omicron variant but does not appear to be lethal to vaccinated people. The interesting thing is they are now relying on sewer sampling instead of testing and contact tracing to guide them through the latest infection rise. I don’t know if the DR government has and uses a Covid sewer sampling protocol. Compared to the US and the DR, our vaccination rates are much higher. That gives our government breathing time to monitor the new infection rise and rethink bringing in restrictions.
To my fellow Canadians in the DR, today is liberation day. No more testing is required to return to Canada. No. It’s not an April’s fool joke. Enjoy your travel freedom. I intend to shortly. Hopefully we won’t have any restriction hurdles to face next winter.
But don't you still have to be vaxed to get on an airplane?
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