Happy New Year!
Thank you for any help or suggestions you may have for us.
We cancelled our May 2020 trip to Italy like all the rest of us due to Covid.
Going forward, if we have received Covid Vaccines prior to our trip to Italy, do we still have to take a Covid Test prior to departing the USA? Will we need proof of our vaccinations? Also, will we have to quarantine in Italy upon arrival?
Thank you kindly,
Monica
Your guess is as good as mine. Once the Schengen countries allow US tourists again they will probably post information on what will be required to be allowed in. In the meantime, you can read more at https://reopen.europa.eu/en
It’s too early to say, but as no vaccine offers 100% protection, it wouldn’t surprise me if restrictions stayed in place for a while after vaccinations start.
The vaccine only reduces symptoms and does not prevent infection and transmission. I would hope that Covid tests remain in place.
Happy 2021, Monica! Hopefully both the USA and Italy (and elsewhere!) have been able to widely get citizens vaccinated to get vast improvement in the situation. We’ll have to see what policies and procedures are put in place regarding travel, as things develop.
The vaccine only reduces symptoms and does not prevent infection and transmission.
This is a really important point that keeps getting glossed over. The effectiveness numbers are about reducing illness, not infection (therefore, transmissibility). The assumption that an individual who has been vaccinated will automatically get a free pass to go anywhere and do anything (maskless, even) is a bad assumption. Thats why they keep saying people need to keep wearing masks, social distance, etc., even after being vaccinated. What do you think countries will base their entry restrictions on? My guess is they will be watching the infection rates, not vaccination rates.
I dreamed of visiting Milan and, in particular, the San Siro stadium. But now it is so sad to see an empty stadium during Serie A matches ... I wish that one day we will return to normal, before COVID life.
Israel may help answer some of the questions, since we are uniquely positioned:
As long as there are testing requirements, you can expect numerous vaccinated Israelis will be tested. So I guess we'll find out how effective the vaccine is. I just saw this article in the local press that the largest HMO (Clalit - members are over 40% of the population) did an analysis that indicates vaccinations reduce the spread of the virus. You have to scroll through a lot of ads in between the paragraphs, but it's free :-)
The deal with Pfizer includes sharing Israeli medical data with them.
chani, since none of the vaccines have been approved (in the US/EU) for children, how are they doing that? Testing on children as young as twelve only started in December (I think).
Israel is an independent country, not US or EU.
Israel is an independent country, not US or EU.
Of course.
What I want to know is if the government explicitly made a decision to use these vaccines on children, even though the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines just started being tested on children: trials being critical to make decisions on dosages, contra-indicators and just plain knowing if they're effective on children. These are usually not questions that are just assumed away. I don't care if they made such a decision, as an independent country, just how it was made.
Stan,
All good points. I'm just hoping to travel a little more domestically, with precautions after I'm vaccinated. IMHO, international travel may start in the fall but I don't see anything going back to normal until 2022. I've been reading that the Covid numbers are going to peak in Feb which doesn't say much for any spring travel anywhere.
There's no decision been made yet on anything more than a week out and that's the norm here, sigh. It was announced as a goal by the virus czar. He predicted that pharmacological research would establish that the minimum age threshold for the vaccines could be safely lowered from 16 to 12, and FDA approval for such use secured, by March. Who knows? Is anyone running Phase 3 trials on that age group?
Moderna is trialing its vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds but is having trouble getting enough participants:
According to the article, Moderna needs 3000 subjects but only 800 are enrolling each month.
The article has this to say about the situation with the Pfizer vaccine: "A spokesman for Pfizer said the company hopes to have data from 12- to 15-year-olds in the early part of this year and then, based on those findings, could start a trial in younger children in the spring."
