I have been fortunate during the COVID-19 pandemic to be able to travel to San Francisco from my home in Vancouver to visit my daughter and her family not once, not twice, but three times. As the pandemic has progressed governmental regulations have evolved to make travel not really more difficult, but certainly more inconvenient and have finally become nonsensical. Here’s the final part of my story.

PLEASE NOTE: If you read my previous post, you may have noticed that it seemed incomplete. And you would be right. For some reason, WordPress did not publish the entire post so I have now re-published it complete with ending.

Act 3

Soon after I finished quarantining from my Christmas trip, my daughter asked if I could return in mid-March to cover au pair and pod school teacher spring break vacations. I jumped at the opportunity – why not? My first two trips were so easy to navigate. Off I went for a pre-flight COVID test, this time a nasal swab.

In mid-March of this year the Vancouver airport was still quite empty with only three flights taking off that mid-afternoon. In spite of this being my third pandemic trip, I was still surprised at how little travel was taking place.

I planned to stay in San Francisco for three months as a trip to Hawaii was in the works for early June and it didn’t make much sense to go home and quarantine and then turn around a few weeks later to come back. As usual, for my family’s peace of mind, I went for a COVID test a few days after I arrived. What is my negative test score now? I think it’s nine.

At that time San Francisco was vaccinating the over-65 age group so I booked first and second shots at a CVS drugstore. The pharmacist did not care that I was Canadian and had no US health insurance. Get in line and roll up your sleeve she said. Which I did.

The state of Hawaii requires all visitors, except those vaccinated in Hawaii, to provide proof of a recent negative COVID test, the results of which have to be uploaded to the Safe Travels Hawaii website. We all went for tests – adults and children alike – two days before the flight. At the airport, we were directed to present ourselves at a Safe Hawaii check point where our tests were confirmed. The agent noted on our boarding passes that we had followed the rules and we were allowed on the plane.

The aircraft was a Boeing 767 with seven seats across and it was packed! For 5 hours and 15 minutes we were crammed in like sardines, told we could lower our masks to take a drink or a bite of food, but to replace them between sips and bites. As far as I could tell, everyone complied. But upon landing, the insanity of an overanxious airline became apparent. In spite of our 5+ hours of crowding, we were told to socially distance while disembarking – as if there was six feet of room anywhere (apart perhaps in business class) for 182 economy passengers to go! No test was required for the return trip and after all the precautions I had been taking, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Finally it was mid-June and time to come home. In spite of being fully vaccinated, there were several things I had to do:

• have a COVID test within 72 hours of my departure and have a printout of my negative results with me to show the airline representative in San Francisco and immigration officials in Vancouver

• book and pay for three nights in a quarantine hotel and bring proof of payment with me to show immigration officials in Vancouver

• register with the ArriveCan app and have my assigned traveller number ready to show immigration officials in Vancouver

• register with LifeLabs in Vancouver for my compulsory COVID test at YVR.

At the Vancouver airport I lined up with the other passengers and submitted to yet another nasal swab though this time the swabbing included my mouth. First time that had happened! There must have been at least 40 testing booths as there were four rows like the one in the photo. The line moved quite quickly, though, and when I left I was given a COVID test kit for day 8 of my quarantine.

The rule was that once negative COVID results were received, you could leave your quarantine hotel and go to your own place of quarantine for the remainder of the 14 day period. However, the pre-payment for the hotel was non-refundable which seemed a little unfair to me. And in fact, the hotel I chose did refund the third night which I did not use.

The drill with the eighth day COVID test was (1) register with Switch Health, an organization based in Ontario; (2) on the eighth day of your quarantine period log onto your Switch account and video chat with a nurse (mine was in Montreal) who guided you through the process; (3) reserve a time slot for a courier to pick up the test and refrigerate the sample until that time; (4) await COVID test results.

Starting with the eighth day and for several days thereafter, the ArriveCan app asks if you have both taken and submitted your self-administered COVID test. After 14 days in my hot little apartment (I did not anticipate quarantining through a heat dome!), I was free to move about the country.

I’m a good Canadian and follow rules well. But this last set of rules annoyed me for several reasons.

• I was fully vaccinated and at no time was I ever questioned about my immunity status.

• The requirement for a 3-day stay in a quarantine hotel was a federal one. Of the four cities you could fly into – Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal – only Vancouver and Toronto enforced the quarantine hotel requirement. Enforcement was via the threat of a fine – see the photo at the top of this post. Calgary and Montreal police openly admitted they were not issuing any tickets to people who avoided a quarantine hotel stay.

• If you drove across the Canadian border, there was no quarantine hotel requirement. Only travellers flying in had to put out for a hotel.

• At least 30% of travellers coming into Canaada were deemed essential workers and did not have to take COVID tests at all. They were far more likely to bring COVID into the country than a plane load of people who have had to present a negative test to get on the plane.

I emailed the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health and my Member of Parliament (only the Prime Minister’s office replied) with the above points. And guess what? Starting two days from now, fully vaccinated travellers will not be required to quarantine, to stay in a quarantine hotel or to submit to COVID tests at the airport.

I had no idea my opinon was so highly valued!

Would I travel to the USA again if the rules were not changing? Of course I would. The joy of spending time with my family far outweighs the inconvenience coming home and the unpleasantness of the (thirteen) COVID tests. I took a calculated risk three times, that I could be careful and avoid infection. The joy of pandemic travel was there for me.