The Plane Is Boarding, Where Are Your Test Results?

Making it even more difficult are the ever-changing requirements for international travel, with the testing deadlines often a moving target. In recent weeks, some places have shortened the window for valid test results, including the Cayman Islands — previously, a negative P.C.R. test taken within 72 hours was sufficient for entry.

Testing has been a repeated pain point throughout the pandemic, from the limited availability and turnaround times that could stretch as long as a week in the spring of 2020 to the shortage of at-home tests during the Delta surge last summer. But the one-two punch of the highly contagious Omicron variant and the holiday season has led to a huge demand for tests that the United States was, by and large, not prepared to meet. For some travelers, that means that the best-laid plans, and even backup plans, may fall through.

“We have as much test volume now as we did in the large wave that we saw last holiday season,” said Alicia Zhou, the chief science officer of Color, a Burlingame, Calif., health technology company that has partnered with organizations across the country to provide large-scale testing and vaccination programs. Color guarantees that P.C.R. results will be turned around within 48 hours or less; according to Dr. Zhou, the majority of results are returned in 24 hours or less. The tests are free to the end user. They’ve been able to maintain that turnaround time in the latest surge, largely because they did not scale back operations when the demand for testing dropped in the middle of 2021, Dr. Zhou said.

“It felt like it wasn’t time for us to step off the gas yet,” Dr. Zhou said. “Omicron snuck up on us, but it also came on the tail end of Delta.”

Demand for at-home tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration, like iHealth and BinaxNow, has skyrocketed, too, with pharmacies largely out of stock and shipping significantly delayed. Unless these tests are proctored by a medical professional, they are not sufficient for international travel, but they do offer peace of mind for family gatherings.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/travel/covid-test-chaos.html