Many of us safari hunters are concerned about testing positive (or false positive) during our pre-departure PCR testing.

My understanding is that the country of Zimbabwe allows hunters who test positive to quarantine at remote hunting camps.

This is probably acceptable assuming that the hunter is flying into the country to hunt.

However, after chartering back to the city of departure and then testing positive (or false positive), what are the available (and reasonable) options?

Charter back to the hunting camp? Quarantine at the country designated locations, or the PH's home, or the outfitter's home, or a local B&B, etc.?

I suspect that the de-fault option is to quarantine at the B&B where the hunter stayed post arrival and pre departure.

My concern is that the B&B's will be reluctant to provide both lodging and meals to hunters who have tested positive.

Question - Why don't the professional hunting organizations in the various countries, including but not limited to, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, and Uganda make arrangements (?) with a local B&B (or other lodge) to accommodate hunters (at the hunter's expense of course) who have tested positive (or false positive)?

Perhaps I'm overreacting but I'm fairly confident that if I was to extend my post departure stay at the B&B from 2-days to 14-days, the owner/operator would be a little concerned for his staff and other clients. In addition to hunters, they have photographic tourists, clients associated with various embassies, businessmen/women, etc.

Cajun,

That's a good question. Ask your safari operator how he would handle that.

Mark

My PH informed me that you will go to a designated hotel, at your expense. I'm speaking of Zimbabwe, no idea how other country's handle it. Not very comforting.

Published restrictions say quarantine must be at a “government approved facility”, can’t find a list anywhere of government approved facilities. I believe I’d take another PCR test (or two) if I tested positive on the first one. I would bet their approved facilities aren't the most accommodating places. I’m not sure charter pilots would be real interested in flying a Covid positive passenger to a hunting camp, or if the outfitter would welcome a Covid positive visitor (false positive or not). I hope none of us have to find out how this would work. I suspect a work around will be found very quickly, if it hasn’t already been found.

I have just tested positive for having the Delta Variant. Likely exposed around the 1st of August. I've had both the Moderna jabs earlier in the spring. Currently self isolating until the 12th or the 14th or ?????

The question that no one can answer for me is if I had a hunt planned for the 1st of Sept in Tanzania would I breeze through the gauntlet of testing sites as required at every stop I made in route ???

My guess from the amount of conflicting answers that I have received is to learn how best to survive on hotel grub and have some novels with more than 600 pages in my luggage. Once out of the USA you are a moving target due to the antigens and antibody your are carrying this soon after contracting the Virus.

Anyone have any impute on this possible situation ?

quote:

Originally posted by DArcy_Echols_Co:
I have just tested positive for having the Delta Variant. Likely exposed around the 1st of August. I've had both the Moderna jabs earlier in the spring. Currently self isolating until the 12th or the 14th or ?????

The question that no one can answer for me is if I had a hunt planned for the 1st of Sept in Tanzania would I breeze through the gauntlet of testing sites as required at every stop I made in route ???

My guess from the amount of conflicting answers that I have received is to learn how best to survive on hotel grub and have some novels with more than 600 pages in my luggage. Once out of the USA you are a moving target due to the antigens and antibody your are carrying this soon after contracting the Virus.

Anyone have any impute on this possible situation ?

Eish!

"People can continue to test positive for up to 3 months after diagnosis and not be infectious to others."

Excerpt:

***
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

International Travel During COVID-19
Updated June 10, 2021

Information for people who recently recovered from COVID-19

If you recovered from a documented COVID-19 infection within the last 3 months, follow all requirements and recommendations for fully vaccinated travelers except you do NOT need to get a test 3-5 days after travel unless you are symptomatic. People can continue to test positive for up to 3 months after diagnosis and not be infectious to others.
***

EXACTLY MY POINT

This is my biggest worry but:

I figure, I'm showing up in Africa with a negative PCR test. Then spending two weeks in camp. It's damn hard to find a legitimate case of "outdoor spread" with Covid, so I feel like I'm playing with heavy odds in my favor.

Guys, this has been one of my concerns all along. We did have a backup plan for my group "just in case". All the worry is for naught as Saturday two of my party came down with full blown covid. We had a big party last week for last minute planning so everyone exposed.
My first impression would have been the Famous Grouse scotch at the party would have killed the covid but the damn Chinese must have genetically manipulated the genes so scotch wouldn't affect the virus.
BTW, we were set to leave Wednesday. Had to cancel last year and now this year. Lose-lose for everyone.

While researching the risks associated with flying during the ongoing pandemic, I encountered the following article.

I found the article to be very informative and enlightening and I am now a lot less apprehensive about international flights.

Excerpt:

"Finally, Freedman says, don't forget to wear a mask and socially distance throughout the travel process — while traveling to and from the airport, while waiting in the airport and while boarding and exiting the plane.

"To me, one of the scariest parts [of flying] is the disembarkation process," Freedman says. "Airlines can control people getting onto a plane, but getting off can be chaos because everybody rushes off the plane."

For this reason, Freedman says, he and his wife aren't flying this year for Thanksgiving. They're taking Amtrak instead."

Cheers and please carry on my friends.

***
KPBS

Do Masks On Plane Flights Really Cut Your Risk Of Catching COVID-19?
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Michaeleen Doucleff / NPR

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, air travel looked like a risky endeavor. Some scientists even worried that airplanes could be sites of superspreading events. For example, in March a Vietnamese businesswoman with a sore throat and a cough boarded a flight in London. Ten hours later, she landed in Hanoi, Vietnam; she infected 15 people on the flight, including more than half of the passengers sitting with her in business class.

Then in April, airlines shifted course. Many started requiring passengers to wear masks on planes — and some airlines even enforced the policy. Just on Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it now "strongly recommends" all passengers and crew members wear masks.

So the big question is this: How well do the masks work? Do they make it safe to fly across the country for a family visit?

Scientists are just beginning to answer that question. And their findings offer a glimmer of hope as well as fresh ideas about what's most important for protecting yourself on a plane.

The new evidence comes largely from Hong Kong, where health officials have been meticulously testing — and tracking — all passengers who land in the city. "They test everybody by PCR on arrival, quarantine them in single rooms for 14 days and then test the passengers again," says infectious disease doctor David O. Freedman at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. So health officials there know which passengers boarded the plane while already infected with the virus and whether they could have infected anyone else on the plane.

Freedman and his colleague have been analyzing these data, with a specific focus on one airline: Emirates.

"Since April, Emirates has had a very rigid masking policy," Freedman says. Not only does the airline require passengers and crew members to wear masks, but flight attendants also make sure everyone keeps on their masks, as much as possible, throughout the entire flight.

Freedman looked at all Emirates flights from Dubai to Hong Kong between June 16 and July 5. What he found is quite telling. During those three weeks, Emirates had five flights with seven or more infected passengers on each flight, for a total of 58 coronavirus-positive passengers flying on eight-hour trips. And yet, nobody else on the planes — none of the other 1,500 to 2,000 passengers — picked up the virus, Freedman and his colleague report in the Journal of Travel Medicine.

"Those were flights with higher risk, and yet there was no transmission," Freedman says.

On another Emirates flight, a whopping 27 coronavirus-positive people boarded the plane in Dubai. Guess how many other passengers were infected on the eight-hour flight?

"There appear to have been two in-flight transmissions," Freedman says.

Without the masks, he would have expected many more cases. Freedman and his colleague found several other high-risk flights with no transmission, including an executive jet that flew from Tokyo to Tel Aviv, Israel, with two of the 11 passengers infected with the coronavirus.

"They were all sitting in a very small environment because it was an executive jet," Freedman says. "And yet again, there was no transmission because passengers were meticulously masked. The crew supervised the masking."

In fact, since airlines have started to require masks, Freedman says, scientists have not documented one superspreading event on airlines. "Flights that had significant transmission documented were flights early on in the pandemic."

All together, these data suggest masks are working — and working well. "There's encouraging evidence from a number of flights that masking does help greatly, but it would be nice to study it better," he says. "The circumstantial evidence is, your risk is low on a plane, if there is rigid masking."

And that last part is key. To keep the risk low on planes, everyone needs to keep their mask on while riding the plane.

Why? Planes have excellent air ventilation and filtration systems, which remove coronavirus particles from the air about every six minutes, the U.S. Transportation Command reported Thursday.

"So the only opportunity to breathe the virus in comes from the air that passes by you before it goes through that ventilation system," says engineer Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech. "And so that's only going to happen if you're sitting close to the person who's sick."

In other words, because of a plane's filtration systems, your risk of catching the coronavirus on a flight comes almost entirely from the people sitting around you. And that risk is lower when those fellow passengers wear masks.

The mask will block some of the virus particles a person releases into the air around them. It will also reduce how much virus you breathe in. And it will prevent big drops of spit and saliva from hitting your nose and mouth, Marr says.

For these reasons, Marr says, when she flies, she carefully chooses which mask to wear.

"I save my best mask for the plane. It has a couple layers of HEPA filters that remove more than 99% of particles," she says. "It's not my everyday mask. I can't just hang it around my neck. It's more troublesome than that."

You can't really buy N95 masks right now, but if you happen to have one, Marr recommends using it — or even a P100 respirator, which includes a plastic facepiece and particulate filters or cartridges that remove 99.97% of virus particles. "On the plane, you want the best there is," she reiterates. "But just make sure it fits well, and keep in mind, the mask doesn't protect your eyes. So you might want to consider wearing a face shield or goggles or some other kind of eye protection."

Also remember to disinfect surfaces around your seat, such as the armrests, tray tables and seat backs. You can use hand sanitizer or bleach wipes, and try to do it regularly throughout the flight. Avoid touching your face as much as possible, Marr says. And keep chatter to a minimum. When you talk, you can emit 10 times the droplets and aerosols that you do when you're quiet.

Finally, Freedman says, don't forget to wear a mask and socially distance throughout the travel process — while traveling to and from the airport, while waiting in the airport and while boarding and exiting the plane.

"To me, one of the scariest parts [of flying] is the disembarkation process," Freedman says. "Airlines can control people getting onto a plane, but getting off can be chaos because everybody rushes off the plane."

For this reason, Freedman says, he and his wife aren't flying this year for Thanksgiving. They're taking Amtrak instead.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
***

Flying back home for us - on Emirates - we do not need a test before departure.

Tests are done at arrival.

Happened to me a few weeks ago.

Other nationalities require a negative test before boarding.

i would talk to operator and make sure you and he can arrange the quarantine facility.

if your operator is half assed honest and competent he has already has one.

biggest risk is getting caught in a government hotel covid tester scam where everyone has a cut sending you to a quarantine facility - happened in India early in 2020.

Mike

If i was hunting zim I would talk to operator that we drive back to harare with no one else.

if you test positive - you sit in the back of truck in the open and drive back to camp and he puts you in his most distant chalet and feed you.

i would also make sure you are vaccinated before you go on any safari.

Mike

Everyone is assuming the tests in Africa work to detect covid or to falsely test positive for covid when none is present. You’re giving their medical system a great deal more credit than due. I’d wager they pocket the tourist money, falsify results, and save the lab effort for actual medical need.