Rise in cases in london and europe

I leave for London three weeks from tomorrow. Unless something drastic changes things, I'm going. At some point this has to become an endemic rather than a pandemic.

And after London, I have five more countries to visit.

That doesn't mean I won't have masks with me.

The rise in cases (and it's not just the UK and Europe) was predicted once restrictions were eased. Since this is still Omicron (and it's subvariant), I'm no more concerned about travel than I am about shopping at home. I'm leaving on Sunday for our next trip, and will continue to mask, and take other precautions, just as I do here

Yep, I agree with my 2 compatriots here. I'm going in less than 4 weeks. I'll carry N95s and wear them all the time. I don't mind that, I did it when I went in October and if it means I can travel then that's what I'll do.

Locally in unmasked and unvaxxed Idaho, positive cases are up 619% but hospitalizations are down 34% with deaths down 39%. ANYwhere I go will be better than here.

Our family is leaving for London on Friday. We have noted also the rise in cases but have decided we are going to go. We are vaccinated and boosted, but we acknowledge the risk of testing positive over there and being "stuck" there for a time. We have definitely firmed up our commitment to be masked and to avoid some indoor activities - for example, we're going to eat outdoors or at our AirBnb flat wherever possible, try to minimize our use of the Tube when we can walk, etc. As you note, risk tolerance is variable and we are going to go with what we hope is a good plan and realize it won't be like normal times.

Ditto what Frank II and CJean said. We leave April 26 for 5 weeks in England. Vaxxed, boosted and masked.

We in the UK are in the middle of a huge spike again. Lots of excellent data and maps revised most days at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274 which is the BBC making the official data more easily understood.

The hospital covid numbers are steeply up, deaths are higher, and my wife and I are very frustrated. We live here and can't go out again - not because of restrictions, but because of the completely expected result of removal of all restrictions and what appears to be a conscious effort to bury the pandemic by the powers that be.

My wife's health means we can't afford to get it. Now there are no restrictions on people here of any sort, even no travel ones, and a concerted effort to stop testing and keeping records, and people who are tested positive no longer isolating but being actively encouraged to go into work regardless, so we have what we have.

We want to travel, and we want visitors to come. Let's hope this massive spike passes as quickly as it came. We can hope...

We left for a 1 week tour to Finland on Feb. 10. Although Omicron seemed to be waning, I was ready to cancel. I am not in healthcare, but in research at a large medical school in St. Louis. We had a very bad surge here, with hospitals pushed to their limits. My boss is a psychiatrist, so very plugged in to the clinical side and fully aware of the situation at our hospital. She told me to go. We had 2 connections each way to and from Helsinki, plus 2 domestic flights within Finland. Lots of time in airports and on planes. We wore KF-94 masks while flying and regular surgical masks the rest of the time. We ate out at restaurants and in a large shared dining room at the resort in Lapland. Our tour group was 8 including the guide, so small, but we were still with others most of the time. We tested negative as did all of our group, flew home, and remained negative. Obviously things could have gone differently, but just to give you an example of a successful trip - that likely would have been cancelled due to my fear/anxiety if others (including my husband) had not encouraged me to go. I can't say that I didn't experience some stress worrying about the test to get home. But we had an amazing trip anyway. It was our first international trip since the pandemic started, and I would have been scared no matter when we decided to go again. I am glad we got back out there when we did. In deciding to go, it helped me to think through all of the scenarios of what would happen if one or both of us tested positive - yes we could afford it, yes we had someone who could take care of our dogs, yes we had travel insurance that included medical care and trip interruption, yes we had a travel agent who would assist with rebooking flights, etc. I am now happily planning what we will do during our free time and extra days when we go on our RS Basque Country tour in October. I hope this helps. If anyone needs a vacation, it is our healthcare workers!

We will have to see if the new Deltacron variant is more serious than Omicron - if it is, restrictions may have to be reintroduced, although the government is keen to pretend Covid doesn’t exist any more.

A friend caught Omicron on the plane to Spain last month despite wearing a mask all the time other than when eating and drinking. With the rules on mask wearing everywhere including flights being relaxed, case numbers are going to increase even further.

Scotland has held off removing some of the Covid restrictions due to rising infections there.

Everybody has different risk factors. I have just started going to cafes where the tables are well spaced. I am not using public transport, wouldn’t go to the theatre or a concert and am still wearing a mask indoors in public places a shops.

As clearly indicated by the previous posts, different people have vastly different levels of Covid risk and fear. Cases will continue to rise and fall and those at greater risk and the more fearful should avoid travel or take more personal precautions like masking. As a healthy and vaccinated senior, I plan to proceed with travel plans and will only mask if and when mandated, as I respect the right of everyone to take responsibility for their own health.

The immunocompromised have serious concerns and I fully empathize. It must be terribly hard to see safeguards come down when you are still impacted.

For my part, I feel as many of you do and I think CJean said it best (paraphrasing a bit): I will take the same precautions as I do when shopping. Wash my hands, wear a mask in crowds and most indoors, avoid massive gatherings like concerts and theatre for now. But travel I will, as long as “they” will let me on a plane.

We were there just before the uptick in cases began. Continue watching the numbers to see if they continue up or level off. Just because there are no restrictions doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself. We wore masks on the train to Cambridge, on the tube, in the theatre, and anyplace it was very crowded. We also got tested before going over just for piece of mind.

I am going to London in late April--planning to wear my mask throughout the airport, in flight, on public transit--walk as much as possible, though--in shops and museums, and in any crowded street areas. I plan to bring tests so that I am not surprised by a positive test the day before I am due to come home--if I should test positive a few days earlier then I can make plans.

My partner and I are going to London the last week of April, and then going around Ireland for the first two weeks of May. We're taking my mom and youngest sister, and my mother-in-law. I have to say I'm still definitely feeling the pressure. I'm immunocompromised but got lucky and had a relatively mild case of COVID (I mean, it sucked, but considering I had spent two years expecting to be at least hospitalized for it, it was way better than I had even hoped for - I happened to get it within the whole "2 weeks after the booster for immunity" period which must have helped), as did my partner - but any natural immunity will be waning by the time we're there and there's no chance of a 4th shot. My mom and sister also got sick, and should still be relatively safe while we're there - but now even that is worrying me since they're likely to feel less personally paranoid than the rest of us! My mother in law has a 22 hour trip to get there, spending time in 3 different airports, and that's a very big concern - though I think she's optimistically trying to think of it as an opportunity to never have to remove her mask while actually on a plane, since she can mostly wait until she can hide away in an airport to eat.

So far everyone still wants to go, but I still worry that's more out of feeling restless and like it's now or never, rather than a real consideration of the situation. Because our trip in Ireland would be relatively COVID-friendly (easy to just be in the rental car or exploring mostly outdoor sites if we need to), we're still monitoring what might need to change for the London portion. Beyond masking, of course, we intend to get take out as much as possible (being close to Borough Market should help!), walk and bus as much as possible, and are focusing more on walking tours and the like instead of indoor sight-seeing. We also haven't booked any theatre tickets yet, even though in previous years that would have been the main reason to go to London, and are waiting to see about cases/how many tickets to each show have been sold. And worst comes to worst, our flights from London to Dublin are changeable, and we could skip over London except for a lay-over.

It is time to get out of our basements and live. Travel, is life and it is time to live.

Thank you all for your replies. I agree, it's time to move and take some reasonable risk. It's scary at the same time. Good luck to everyone and please post after your travels. I woukd like to read about the situation on the ground. Also please let me know ease of testing on Sundays in London.

Good luck and stay safe!

CJean’s post could have been mine and I agree entirely with many of you. We leave Sunday for a 6 week trip. We will take every precaution to stay healthy, just as we do at home. We will wear masks, eat outdoors or in our apartments or hotels and avoid crowds. We are going so far as to not eat the airline meals so we can snack when others are wearing their masks. We are vaccinated and boosted. Noticing the spike in cases I was thinking in the back of my mind that maybe we should hold off traveling. Yesterday I decided we were definitely going. That’s when I learned that a good friend passed away. My last communication with her was when she told me to take a lot of pictures and that my trip will also be hers. And so it will be.

I have to decide about a Lake District rental in May.

It is time to get out of our basements and live. Travel, is life and it is time to live.

That is a fair statement, and not to be disrespected. But it is not a "science-based" expression, it's more (sorry to impute motives to a stranger ...) emotional (which includes, among other things, "pandemic fatigue") than dispassionate.

We, too, are leaving for London and Jersey in about 10 days. We will wear masks, use sanitizer, avoid the Tube when we can, eat outside, etc. We are all vaxxed and now boosted. I went to Switzerland and Austria last August/September and was not boosted then, just vaxxed. On two occasions we were on trains with people who were sick, one definitely seemed like Covid. We wore our KN95s and trusted to our vaccines and tested negative before returning. This particular trip with members of my family (Roots type trip) has been in the works for 5 years. So we will go and trust our vaccines, boosters and behavior.

Andrea - I don't know you but am sorry about your friend. I hope your trip is extra special as you carry your friend's memory with you.

We are on one of the April Paris & HOF tours. Looking forward to it!

I go in July. Little tennis tournament to enjoy.

Was in London for the entire month of November 2021. Wore a mask on the tube and on busses. Most did but under 30’s didn’t seem to care unless they were parents.

Travel is what keeps me sane.

We leave for France tomorrow. I have given no thought to cancelling. I don't mind wearing a mask indoors at all. The only change I might make is not to eat in restaurants. Fortunately, we enjoy getting takeout, and we are staying in apartments almost every night. At ages 68 and 70, we can't afford to wait for a virus-free world to travel. Who knows how many years of travel we have left.

Andrea - per our experience with flying on United to Costa Rica in January/February, passengers were supposed to wear masks but a lot didn’t. And we saw all, kinds of masks including buffs which are worthless. The flight attendants did not enforce the mask rule. If you wait to eat until after others have eaten and have their masks on, then you won’t be eating.

The problem with” moving on” is that some won’t survive if they contract the virus. That is hard to deal with for me. It is sad that we can’t move on with everyone willing to wear appropriate masks.
My September trip depends on numbers as hubby has developed a serious illness. We will discuss with his PCP in July and August.

Mary, that’s unfortunate about your experience on United and I hope we don’t experience that. Diane, who posted just after you did, told me she had a much better experience on United on her trip to Mexico than she did on a different airline. I suppose it’s up the the flight crew to enforce things, but it shouldn’t be that way. We will eat a large meal before boarding and will just have snacks and protein bars to munch on. All easy to just lower or move aside the mask between bites. We are diligent about masking, hand washing, sanitizer, etc. I’ve come to the conclusion that we can’t control other people, but we can control what we do. I don’t care if we are the only people with masks.

kacachat, thank you for your kind words. I hope you enjoy your trip.

Anecdotal, based on things happening in the hospital where I work (Southern UK). We started noticing a surge a couple of weeks ago, now we are starting to see a real problem (Wards being repurposed, high percentage of emergency admissions testing positive).
Added to this, large number of staff becoming infected this week (myself included) - and we are all double jabbed and boosted.

It is really strange, it's almost as though the official position here is that if we ignore it, it will have gone away- and Ukraine keeping almost everything off the news, I think many people in the UK are jsut unaware or don't care.

Tahsis, my husband is also immunocompromised as a heart transplant recipient. He just today received Evusheld shots. They are monoclonal antibodies and provide instant protection instead of protection after two weeks with the covid vaccines. Can you find Evusheld? We are in the US.

I am 68 years-old. Like many other grandparents, I have seen a lot less of my extended family than usual over the past two years. I think that you should travel with your family while you can. The future is never a given, and to pass up this opportunity may not even gain you anything. Everything that is going on in London is headed our way, isn't it? I am planning to travel in Europe for almost four months starting this June. I am fully vaccinated, and I hope to get a second booster before I go. I will contimue to be careful about masking, ventilation, and indoor activities in general. For the first six weeks, I will travel with a grandson, and for the last two weeks with a granddaughter. Those are precioous opportunities for me, and worth some additional exposure. Whenever I see any of my grandchildren, I am at risk. All but one attend public schools, and two of their moms are nurses who work in local hospitals.
When Rick Steves opens up his 2023 tours, I will sign up! I hope to travel with two different granddaughters that summer. I am planning to travel every year for as long as I can. I am trying to minimize flights, due to Global Warming, Covid, cost, and general discomfort, but I am willing to fly somewhere once a year. I do not believe that we will ever be Covid-free again. Take care, and do what you need to do to protect yourselves and others, but continue to live as full a life as you can in our increasingly unstable world.

Our family of four just returned from a Spring Break trip to London. Had no trouble. And, found plenty of places to test before our departure home--which we were a bit stressed about before we left for the UK. (The use of masks in the UK is a personal choice now as even Heathrow has removed the mask mandate for passengers.) The one anecdotal experience was watching some folks try to test at Heathrow before their flight and wait and wait and wait on the email verifying their negative test results--American Airlines would not check them in. Not sure if they ever got on the flight back to DFW, they may have cut it too close. We tested the day before and used the Verifly app which worked fine. We used www.myhealthcareclinic.com to locate a testing center and schedule an appointment. Easy. Expensive, but easy! LOL

Anybody know what happens if you catch COVID while in England? I guess you can't fly back to the US until you can test negative - do you need to quarantine or isolate or anything? Do tourists need to report positive tests?

I'm currently in France and am hopping onto the Eurostar tomorrow for London until the weekend. I will say that I was in France and Germany over Christmas if it felt relatively safe - vaccine checks at every restaurant and store, masks even outdoors. This week is like night and day where seeing a mask is the rarity and no more vaccine checks. Its almost feels like Europe circa 2019...
Whether that gives you comfort or stress, I cannot say but I want you to be prepared for what you're gonna get. If you're family is masked up you're likely to be the only ones that way. I don't feel at any more at risk here than I do at home, but even mask use at home has pretty much gone away.
Just an FYI from some boots on the ground. I wish you a good trip!

I've been sick with Covid over the last two weeks, it was quite mild, similar to a mild cold but with more fatigue and a cough that shows no signs of abating. I'm triple vaxxed. I also know many people who currently are infected or have recently recovered, many more than at any time since the pandemic started. The majority are vaccinated but several aren't, all experienced mild symptoms.

Current data indicates that of those in UK hospitals with Covid only 44% are unwell with the virus, the remainder are in hospital for another reason but coincidentally tested positive for Covid. For the most part it would appear that the current variant causes less severe symptoms however judging by the number of people I know who are testing positive it's clear that the virus is running rampant at the moment.

Whilst the likelihood of falling ill with severe symptoms is reasonably low, the wider impact on travel restrictions should you test positive are the bigger concern. Vaccination doesn't prevent infection and mitigating actions such as mask wearing only offer partial protection so the odds of contracting the virus whilst visiting London as a tourist are quite high in my opinion. However, I know a number of people who have not fallen victim to the virus whilst many close to them have. As a healthcare worker who has been exposed to a high risk environment for some time it may be the case that you have built up a suitable immunity....who knows?

Anybody know what happens if you catch COVID while in England? I guess you can't fly back to the US until you can test negative - do you need to quarantine or isolate or anything? Do tourists need to report positive tests?

Current rules in England state that you do not need to quarantine or self isolate if you test positive although the advice is to remain at home however this is not enforcable by law. If you test positive you do not need to report your result.

The airline you'll be flying with will have their own rules as will the US authorities.

"As a healthcare worker who has been exposed to a high risk environment for some time it may be the case that you have built up a suitable immunity....who knows?"

As someone working for the NHS, if our local staff staff absense numbers are anything to go by, then the answer to "Built up immunity" is a firm "No".

As JC points out, there is no longer any need for isolation, for further testing or even for reporting - so in reality we hove very little idea just how many cases we have in the UK - purely anecdotally and based on my own experience at the moment, I know far more people who have tested positive in the last month than at any other time of the pandemic. I started feeling unwell last Monday and had a positive LFT - eight days later I am still unwell, although thankfully it is not severe.

I've never known so many people unwell at the same time. I really get worried because not only all the controls are off but so is the requirement to report test results. Yesterday the weekend figures were released for the UK - never before have we had nearly a quarter of a million new cases, and that's only those who chose to report and those picked up coincidentally by the NHS.

As far as travel perhaps you will be safe - I hope so - but you will notice, I expect.

But maybe in the next 2 or 3 weeks it might go down as fast as it went up.... maybe.

I hope it works out for you

Update from north of the channel:
While boarding the Eurostar in Gare de Nord, everyone was masked as well as on the train.
Upon exiting the train, most of the people in at. Pancras were unmasked.
Very few masks on the streets and I didn’t see a single mask inside any of the pubs on either guests or employees.
No masks in my hotel either so you should be prepared for this.
Have a great trip!

1 out of every 20 in Austria has COVID right now (including me and my family). Restrictions are dropping here but everyone basically has COVID or is about to have it.

Thank you to the recent posts with on the ground information. It is much appreciated. I suppose my passport will remain in the drawer a bit longer. Sigh.

Thank you to the recent posts with on the ground information. It is
much appreciated. I suppose my passport will remain in the drawer a
bit longer. Sigh.

^^I second that. I'm not quivering in fear in my basement. I'm living my life, and leave tomorrow on a road trip out of state. I have plans for more of those this year, and possibly also an epic Amtrak adventure. In those cases I understand my options in case I get sick (COVID or otherwise) while away from home. I still (despite research) don't have a clear idea of what happens if I test positive while in the UK and can't get my flight home, whether I'm asymptomatic or not. At my age I'm just not up for that. That said, I still have time to change my mind and take my planned/ticketed June UK trip, and I might. Life has not been short on surprises these last two years.

I'm 63 and my husband is 64. We visited Ireland in the fall and are going to Spain in mid-April. We're retired and have no pets or other responsibilities at home, so if we end up delayed returning due to a positive test it'll be a nuisance but not a catastrophe.

We're reasonably healthy but feel like the clock is ticking and who knows how many more years we'll be able to travel. We have multiple friends under 70 with mobility issues who can no longer travel, so we want to go while we still can. The travel wish list is long 🙂

UK folks, we leave next week (London, Cambridge, Jersey). Weather reports right now show somewhat rainy. Still possible to eat outside? Pubs a good option? Trying to minimize exposure for us. We’re all triple jabbed, will wear KN95s, taxi or walk instead of Tube, etc. So biggest exposure seems to be eating inside. Suggestions for outside eating options in London especially in somewhat rainy conditions?

we also get a cold front on Monday or earlier which will reduce the outdoor eating happy factor. Here in Northamptonshire we have been in the very high teens with short sleeves and windows open for the last week. Alas that is on the way out and highs will be closer to 11, with overnight frosts. bah humbug.

I'm sure you'll find a way to enjoy..

In Cambridge (unfortunately currently highest numbers in England) the market has all sorts of excellent food on the food stalls... Not much rain cover though.

I was in London for a long weekend last weekend. I was nervous in general about the negative test requirement to come home, more so when I saw how few masks were worn in London. I would say masking averaged about 25%, slightly higher in museums. I wore my mask indoors and on public transportation and I didn't feel like a freak but was definitely in the minority. The weather was beautiful while I was there and everything - sidewalks, parks, tube, buses - was jam packed with people out enjoying it. A few times I opted to walk rather than squeeze onto a crowded bus. In any event, I tested negative to come home, and took a home test today (four days after return), also negative. I'm triple vaxxed. Also heading to Berlin next Wednesday for a five day trip, with fingers crossed that my luck holds.