So what should you do to stay safe if you do choose to travel? Omicron is on the rise, and it’s looking like it’s quite contagious. While many of the rules given by the CDC and other organizations are supposed to simplify things for people, they are often confusing, complicated, or misunderstood. One epidemiologist has voiced her ire about the latest change in guidelines here. By following these five quick rules for travel (or any social engagement) you are much more likely to stay safe and prevent the spread of COVID.
1) Mask – Use an N95 or equivalent mask that is properly fitted any time you are with people who are not in your pod. This includes when in crowded areas outside, where COVID spread is thought to be much less likely. Although eating out at restaurants and bars to sample the local cuisine might sound great, it’s also hard to eat when your mask is up. When we’ve traveled recently, we chose to get carry out rather than eating in. If you’re with your pod and you have all been using safe practices, then you can unmask when it’s just you and no-one else. See here for a recent update regarding masking efficacy.
2) Boost – It’s not clear to me whether masking or boosting your vaccination is more important, but both play a role. If your masking isn’t perfect, then your next line of defense is your immune system. If boosted, then you’re in good shape to fight off COVID, and if you do get it, it is much more likely that your case will be mild (which is not to say you’ll get off without any harm).
3) Distance – We are social animals, that’s a given. But that’s also how such viruses spread. By keeping distance between you and the next person if they are not in your pod, you decrease the chances of catching something or passing something on. This is true either indoors or outside. So this is the hard one for most people because it goes against our nature, and because other people will move into your bubble when they try to talk with you. This can also be difficult when on a plane or taxi. In the plane, the best you may be able to do is find an airline that requires extra spacing between passengers. This is getting harder to find as the planes are getting fuller again. But once in flight, most airplanes’ ventilation systems are pretty good.
Graphic from here.
4) Health Check- Do you have any symptoms? If so, then don’t participate in activities and get a COVID test as quickly as possible. In fact, it may be important to do daily health checks even when you don’t notice symptoms. Cornell which required these for entrance into buildings on campus found more than 900 cases in the last week of fall semester, even amidst a vaccinated student body. Penn State, which doesn’t require vaccinations, also doesn’t require health checks had 63 reported cases at University Park in the last week posted. It’s likely that one of these schools missed a number of positive cases through lack of vigilance.
Penn State's positive COVID stats from their dashboard at the end of Fall 2021. Note that results past December 8th were not listed.
5) Test if in close quarters – Are you going somewhere where you will be in close quarters with people who aren’t in your pod? Have you had COVID recently and think you’re better? Then do a rapid COVID test prior to mingling with anyone. If you do test positive (and you haven’t had COVID), you should contact your public health authorities and not participate with the group. You can find a good summary of which tests work for which purposes here. It also helps if group organizers mandate such testing if close quarters are unavoidable.
Putting these rules into play
While following all of these rules doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get COVID or spread it, all of these rules are science based and can help us to keep businesses open and avoid additional lock downs. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Example 1: Bob is traveling to another country. This country would like to ban people from Bob’s country of origin given that there have been a lot of cases lately, but reason has prevailed! When Bob shows up at customs, he is first asked to show that he has been vaccinated and boosted (rule 2). Then he is given a general health check (rule 4). He should probably also be required to show a PCR COVID test from 1-2 days prior to his flight since these are more sensitive to having early COVID (rule 5) and he was packed on a flight. In fact, he should probably have shown such a test to get on the flight. However, since Omicron can develop rather quickly and PCR tests can take more time to process, another test like the ID NOW test might be the one to use. If he is symptomatic (rule 4), he should have not flown and used his COVID travel insurance to avoid monetary loss. (Note: Getting COVID related travel insurance at this point should be a no-brainer. Just do it.)
Example 2: Alice has recently had COVID (and has had this confirmed via a PCR test) and wants to go out with friends. She’s feeling better, and as per the CDC’s new rule, it’s been longer than five days. According to this rule, she’s OK to go out now. However, when she takes a rapid antigen test to see if she’s safe, but also because her friends aren’t in her pod (rule 5), she still tests positive. Since these tests are more likely to show you as positive when you are still contagious, she should still isolate (rule 5) and hook up with her friends some other time. Note that if she takes a PCR test again, it will still show her as positive for COVID as it is much more sensitive. In fact PCR tests can detect COVID long after one is no-longer contagious.
Example 3: Carol is going to a play at the local theater. The theater makes use of these rules to ensure the audience is safe and has increased ventilation so that the unmasked actors on stage (who are effectively a pod) can perform without their airflow impacting the audience. Carol first dons her N95 equivalent mask as she leaves her car (rule 1), presents her proof of vaccination and booster (rule 2), and finally sits within her own pod which is separated from others (rule 3), as per theater policy. Since participants won’t be in close contact, no testing is required. However, if Carol has the ability to test ahead of time, she should probably do it just to be sure. Sometimes events that are advertised as socially distanced are NOT.
Example 4: Tim is running a martial arts class. His gym is well ventilated, although a bit cold in the winter, so people come warmly dressed. All participants wear N95 or equivalent masks (rule 1), and are known to be vaccinated and boosted (rule 2). To keep social distancing in play (rule 3), instead of the usual hand to hand type sparring, during the peak of the pandemic, students are learning to spar with long weapons. All symptomatic students are asked to stay home and test (rule 4). If rule 5 regarding testing were implemented every day of class, the participants who are from different pods could probably do hand to hand sparring relatively safely.
In an ideal world, we would test ourselves daily since the Omicron strain is so contagious. As I write this, DC and other school systems are mandating testing for students prior to their return to classes next week. Given that students won’t necessarily be socially distanced, and that the schools may not have had the money to renovate their ventilation systems, this may not be enough. But that’s a topic for another time. The point is that although rapid test kits are, in theory, going to be mailed out to US citizens in the near future, testing availability is not what it should be considering the current circumstances.