Everyone from any Country needs to have a PCR test within the 48 hours prior to the Taiwan bound flight departure time.
And, from last week, every arriving passenger gets tested at the airport on Arrival.
In regards to the USA, the past two weeks have seen about 50% of the positive cases in the first few days in Taiwan as having arrived from the USA. To head off some of those, they started testing at the airport this week and the positive cases get directed to Hospital or Hotels for just the positive people, the others continue to their selected Quarantine hotel.
So there is a choice here for any intending passenger to Taiwan, Suck it up or stay at home.
Do not exclude âfalse positivesâ, the PCR test is far from perfect, and potentially being used outside of its intended scope - those unlucky people testing âfalsely positiveâ are conveniently classified as Asymptomatic, and then included in the Positive Test Results Data
Antigen Tests are of course much worse
Much of the on-line data relating to these testing weaknesses has conveniently been removed
Not so much false positives, but CT values that are negative everywhere else. And people recently having had covid.
I would not go to Taiwan if during the last 3-4 months having had covid. Chances are too high they go wack here.
The test must be done within 48 hours. It is still entirely possible for someone to get infected, especially with the high reproduction rate of Omicron and then be stuck sitting in close quarters breathing the same air.
If it was as bulletproof as you think it is, then I guess we wouldnât be having a pandemic now would we?
The virus doesnât care about what you think are facts.
well⌠in my experience flying to the uk⌠total transit can easily exceed the time mentioned in this article ⌠door to door the fastest time for me is 27 hours.
so ⌠i might get a correct test that is negative⌠get in a taxi or bus and pick it up on the way. 24 hours later still on the airplane. now i can infect others nearby⌠would they be positive at Taoyuan airport? probably not. would i? probably yes.
but there are hundreds of thousands of cases in the US every single day right now. so there are many vectors to pick up the virus.
Yes - there is no research on Omicron yet in this regard - but the mean incubation time until PCR positive before was 2-3 days. If this is halved with omicron - which is quite likely - 24 hours would catch quite a few already.
Besides room to room contagion - I havenât heard of a single person testing positive in the +7 or +4 period. With Omicron they would all be caught on the 6 or 9 day test (depending on what you chose - guess few people chose 10+4, especially as it was never announced your allowed to do 10+4 with the +4 being a normal quarantine hotel - so just chose it to save money)
Because Taiwan only requires a pcr or rt-pcr test 72 hours before departure, and this current strain usually shows symptoms at around day 3-4 after exposure, assuming one isnât asymptomatic.
Plenty of time to be exposed after being tested, or alternatively, not enough time after exposure for the virus to replicate to detectable levels in the body.
Also, depends on which test is taken. A pcr will read positive at much lower viral load level than rt-pcr, so if one opts for the latter they could theoretically have already been exposed for even two days and the test wonât detect it.
edit: depending where you are in the us and if you can swing it, Iâd recommend canceling your ticket and waiting til you just get covid. Save the headache of having to spend a day or two in hotel, then an additional 10 days in the hospital when you inevitably test positive, then have to isolate another week at home⌠if you cancel a ticket before departure nearly every airline will give you the value of the ticket to put towards a future flight within one calendar year. you may not even pay a dime.
this may be true but if youâve served your ten days in the hospital theyâll still let you out so long as you 1) show no symptoms and b) have two pcr tests at least 24 hrs apart that are either negative or positive with a ct value above 30.
so technically theyâre letting covid positive folk out still, they just donât consider them infectious enough to worry about. which is a good thing mind you, but surprising nonetheless considering the zero tolerance policy taiwan has had this entire friggin time
still they call CT 35 or 36 tests a positive - even if they know that you previously were infected. Thatâs why I would really advise against going to Taiwan within 2-3 months of an infection.
Itâs only on recovery that they accept those CT values to get out (because yes people arenât infectious anymore - thatâs in the nature of the PCR test - if a rapid test is positive you very likely are still infectious).
In the US they donât really know how to administer PCR tests. The stick barely goes up into your nose. They should learn from the Taiwanese nurses, who drill all the way into the back of your brain.
