Covid restrictions/guidelines traveling with non-vaxed 10 year old

I will tell you what my daughter's son’s pediatrician recently said at her non-profit's recent Board Meeting. In frustration, he went off topic and indicated people should not be traveling when they have unvaxxed children. He's seeing too many children being hospitalized because they traveled. While the adult, might have gotten Covid also (he was talking unvaxxed parents particularly for getting symptoms), the children are ending up in the hospital. My daughter said he was just beside himself on how the parents were exposing the children needlessly at this time.

You will have no idea who your daughter is being exposed to during this trip. Can you leave her home with a grandparent or someone? What are the requirements for keeping her healthy during this trip? Will everyone else in your group be OK with dealing with those requirements? Will your system keep her healthy? I'm just relaying the thoughts of an overworked and frustrated pediatrician, who says do not travel at this time.

KN95 or N95 (or FFP2 in Europe) masks are required a lot of places in Europe as well as on many airlines. They certainly offer more protection than a surgical mask so at the very least, have a good supply of those.

My daughter-in-law, a family physician, is also recommending to her patients that they not fly and not travel internationally with their unvaccinated children at this time. But if they must travel, definitely use N95 masks on the plane, trains, and anywhere indoors.

Julie, I was in a similar situation as yours and decided to postpone my trip with 11 YO granddaughter. We were due to be in Costa Rica this week but her parents, GD and I all decided it best to postpone the trip until after she is vaccinated simply because of the risk factors. If she should become sick in Costa Rica (a country whose medical care I was unsure of) and we had to quarantine, it would not make for a very good trip or impression on my GD. Out of caution, we are looking at either her Christmas holiday school break or the mid Winter break in February- hopefully fully vaccinated. Obviously, your situation is different since you plan on attending a wedding, but I would be hesitant to bring your daughter. Just my 2C.

Julie, with the new designation of the US as a high risk area is your unvaccinated 10 year old exempt from quarantine? The guidelines talk about persons 12 years and older for most of the new rules, so that seems to imply that you'd be ok.

I agree with Rob. The official posted rules only refer to people 12 and above. There appears to be no rules for kids under 12.

Restrictions vary regionally, so check the rules wherever you plan to be. Here in Hamburg the rules are that kids under 14 don't count in terms of numbers of people meeting, for example.

However, kids and adults alike must follow all masking rules, and that means either FFP2 (N95) or surgical masks when indoors for pretty much everything. Cloth masks are not acceptable. Masks are readily available here, but obviously you should bring a few anyway, including for transit. Testing is also easily accessed here for now (not so much after October 11), so it doesn't hurt to avail yourself. You'll need to test for reentry anyway. Certainly before and after the wedding.

I won't comment on whether or not you should bring your daughter--that's between you and your physician--but putting vaxxed family on either side of her on the flight and similarly distancing her throughout the trip might not be a bad idea.

Hi Everyone -

Thanks so much for your input. After booking tickets yesterday I cancelled them this morning (still within the 24 hour window) due to the change yesterday to "High Risk" country. It appears that my 10 year old would have to quarantine for 5 days (instead of the usual 10) which doesn't work for us obviously. This is really heartbreaking as the wedding is for our former au pair who was like a daughter to us (not all au pairs are like this). I am not giving up hope that the US will get off the "dirty countries" list but probably not likely. If I have this wrong please let me know. This is what I am basing it on. https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/einreiseundaufenthalt/EinreiseUndAufenthalt

We also have to adhere to Swiss protocols as we are transiting through Zurich on our way to Berlin.

So over this virus;(

Julie

Hi Julie,
On a tripadvisor forum discussion some posters did believe that in the case of unvaccinated children coming from the US the quarantine rules would in fact apply. One question I have is what if you were coming from a non high risk area like Switzerland and had been there for over 10 days. The regulations speak of having been in a high incidence area for the last 10 days, but what if you started the trip a few days earlier than planned and stayed in Switzerland and then entered Germany. Not sure if this would work, but worthy of looking into perhaps?

We are currently booked to travel to Germany from the U.S. for two days before taking a train to France. Granted, things change rapidly and we likely won’t know with much certainty if there is a quarantine mandate for unvaccinated children for a few more days or weeks. However the official sites do not contain any such express requirement, and I think it would lead to a flood of unenforceable situations if a border official singlrs out a kid but not the whole family. So if you’re 12 years or older, you must be vaccinated. A family of vaccinated parents with two children would not be subject to quarantine requirements.

We missed the wedding of our former exchange student that took place just last week in Germany. We're really close to their family so I understand how hard that is to miss out! We've booked tickets for December and fingers crossed, things will have settled down with the Delta variant (that's what they're saying at least on the news) to allow the US to come off the high risk list. The everchanging rules are so confusing. Our son will turn 12 in November. While he'll be able to receive both shots before traveling, it'll only be five days from the time of the last shot till the time of the flight. So, which rules apply to him? It sure gets complicated! Ugh!

I'm guessing the way that German authorities could verify if one met vaccination/quarantine requirements would be most easily done on visitors coming by air. It looks like every passenger, including minors, has to have a completed digital entry form (einreisemeldung), and thats easily checked by the airlines. Coming by car or train might be a different matter.

I played around with the form a bit and it doesn't even ask what country you are a resident of. Instead it asks whether you have been in a high incidence country over the last 10 days. As a test I put in the US and then it informs you of the vaccine requirement to avoid quarantine. Then I put in Switzerland and it said no digital entry form is required, and entry requirements are the usual, vaccine or negative test or proof of recovery. No quarantine required. To me that implies that if you stay the full 10 days before entering Germany in a non high incidence country like Germany you are exempt from the entry form and from quarantine even if unvaccinated (assuming you have a negative test or proof of recovery).