Covid test requirements to enter Italy

My worry is ive just recovered from covid still testing positive with lateral flow day 9 of isolating. I really wanted to go to Austria or Canada but not willing to take thw chance. Italy or Switzerland im thinking .

Interestingly my son-in-law's Covid vaccination record also showed his relatively recent infection as a recovery. (Caught it around the time of his booster)

At present, if you have been triple jabbed, all you need is your NHS Covid pass and a certified negative lateral flow test done within 24 hours of your scheduled arrival in Italy. You could do a certified PCR within 48 hours of arrival, but if you have had a recent infection there is a risk of this coming back positive because of remaining RNA in your system which can hang around for many weeks after infection. The lateral flows are a safer marker of ongoing infection.

The reality is that until the requirement for a negative lateral flow, no traveller can be sure they are going until they have the negative certificate to show at the departure airport.

The nhs Covid vaccination record, or more to the point the QR code of your booster works fine when you are required to show your green pass for bars, restaurants and linking to your ski pass to enable it each day. Save as a pdf on your phone's front page and just expand the QR code of your booster when you are asked to present your green pass.

They are hot on mask wearing in queues and lifts. The masks have to be FFP2 rather than surgical or home made masks. Puzzling as this grade is a slightly higher grade of snot catcher/deflector but afik not significantly more protective, unlike FFP3 which is effective at protecting the wearer rather than others around them.

The passenger locator form to return was a pain. Firstly rather than let you upload your Covid vaccination record, it requires an image of your 3rd vaccination QR code to uplaoad. Doesn't work well on an iPad unless you have already got it as an image file already on it. Easier on android (or a laptop where you can crop the QR code to 250*250 pixels)

Cheers Andy, i am off to Whistler Monday going in on positive Pcr test ( you can use this instaid of a negative test for entry ). What is annoying is i have spoken to various so called expert travel folk who specialise on Canada including Arrivecan they have not a clue of the actual requirements amazingly. Anyway hopefully allgoes well its not complex but too much cross referencing in my opinion. Watch this space.

I suppose the testing requirements of different countries are so fluid and the tour ops are a bit reluctant to take the blame for erroneous information. Some of the smaller ones probably haven't got the capacity within the organisation to be fair.

The changes to the UK return tests are truly illogical. Why decide to drop return tests in 2 weeks time? Either make the change as of now or wait and see what the situation in Europe will be in 2 weeks time? In reality the situation will not change much so do it now and save the hassle of certified testing.

It may be that Europe is planning some announcements and the UK changes are timed to be with that.

andymol2 wrote:They are hot on mask wearing in queues and lifts. The masks have to be FFP2 rather than surgical or home made masks. Puzzling as this grade is a slightly higher grade of snot catcher/deflector but afik not significantly more protective, unlike FFP3 which is effective at protecting the wearer rather than others around them.

According to tests carried out by the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen a tight-fitting FFP2 mask provides up to 75 times more protection than to a well-fitting surgical mask.

See you need that type in Austria. Amazing how different countries interpret the requirements. Im flying off tomorrow hopefully all goes ok really stressed.

The Italian Ministry for Health has now confirmed that, with effect from 1 February, there is no longer a requirement for a pre-arrival test when arriving from EU countries. However, no mention of UK so presumably this still applies in the case of arrivals from the UK.

https://www.salute.gov.it/portale/nuovocoronavirus/dettaglioNotizieNuovoCoronavirus.jsp?lingua=italiano&menu=notizie&p=dalministero&id=5780

SwingBeep wrote:

andymol2 wrote:They are hot on mask wearing in queues and lifts. The masks have to be FFP2 rather than surgical or home made masks. Puzzling as this grade is a slightly higher grade of snot catcher/deflector but afik not significantly more protective, unlike FFP3 which is effective at protecting the wearer rather than others around them.

According to tests carried out by the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen a tight-fitting FFP2 mask provides up to 75 times more protection than to a well-fitting surgical mask.

The problem is they rarely fit well and/or the users don't adequately wear them which renders them little more effective than surgical masks. Most of the FFP3 masks are more conforming which makes them more effective but, as somone who has to wear them at times thay would not be well tolerated by the majority of users.

Certainly the attitude of the Italians was much more positive to wearing maskscompared to the UK where make up is deemed more important!