In this week’s edition of the Covid Q&A, we look at how safe it is to travel. In hopes of making this very confusing time just a little less so, each week Bloomberg Prognosis is picking one question sent in by readers and putting it to an expert in the field. This week’s question comes to us from Barbara in Pitcairn, Pennsylvania. Barbara is thinking about planning some trips this summer. She asks:
How should we be thinking about traveling now, especially vacations with unvaccinated friends or family?
Ah, travel. Just typing it here seems to fill the room with sunshine and a warm, inviting breeze. It has to be said: After a very long and difficult year-plus, many of us are longing to see loved ones and go somewhere new.
And yes, there’s still a pandemic going on. But as vaccination levels increase, the coronavirus isn’t the only risk to one’s health — so are loneliness and social isolation, says Preeti Malani, an infectious disease specialist and chief health officer at the University of Michigan.
“From a Covid standpoint, the safest thing is to stay home and never leave. But that’s not the safest thing overall,” she says.
That said, it’s still important to take precautions even if you’re fully immunized. While vaccination adds another layer of safety, it’s not entirely foolproof. Fully immunized people can still fall ill with Covid-19, albeit in exceptionally rare instances.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that vaccinated individuals can travel within the U.S. without needing to quarantine or get tested but should still stay socially distanced, wear a mask and wash their hands. Even fully vaccinated people need to get tested for international trips, which pose more risks because of viral variants. It has previously said to avoid travel if possible.
Those who aren’t immunized, meanwhile, should consider postponing any travel, whether domestic or international, until they’re fully vaccinated, the agency says. If people travel anyway, it recommends testing and other risk-reduction measures.
For an example of what that looks like in practice, consider a road trip that Malani herself went on in March with a few family members, staying at a rented house in South Carolina. While the adults had all been immunized, their children were too young to qualify. The group took precautions before and during the vacation to protect themselves and especially the kids, including avoiding crowded spaces and places like restaurants where people weren’t wearing masks indoors.
Would-be vacationers can also research their destination, specifically local infection rates, vaccination levels and the prevalence of variants, along with how the vaccine they received performs against the most common strains, says Theresa Fiorito, an infectious disease specialist at the Family Travel Medicine Center at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island. Both she and Malani are wary of international travel right now, because of the variants. Travelers can also speak with their own doctors for advice, they noted.
Ultimately, though, a trip poses many more risks to unvaccinated travelers, especially if they’re at high risk of getting a severe Covid-19 infection. So it’s worth having a conversation with them about getting immunized, Malani says.
