How to choose a travel destination during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Boy and I live for travel. Our lives change when we take a break of two weeks and explore a new place. The experience rejuvenates us mentally and gives us plenty of memories to go on for the next few months. Although this is the smallest issue, but this is the only (thankfully) reason that the pandemic has been hard on us.

So as soon as travel became a little safer, we took our Schenghen visa appointment and decided to fly into Europe. Our criteria was simple –

-        -   there should be a direct flight from Bahrain to the destination because masks are hard to wear for longer periods of time,

-     -   no Quarantine requirements,

-      - high rate of vaccination,

-       -  and new covid cases numbers should be low.

 

That gave us only one city to fly into – Frankfurt. We were excited since Frankfurt is close to one of our favourite regions in the world – The Black Forest. We decided to go to Hamburg and Berlin as well but as we were planning, the Delta variant started spreading in densely populated areas of Germany and so we decided to travel to Hungary after the Black Forest.

Ah, I planned and planned but things changed constantly. I have no complaints though!

So how do you track covid numbers diligently and choose your vacation spots? There is a lot of data available online which makes everything very easy.

The first thing to consider is the incidence rate in any place. This is the number of new cases per 100,000. Usually, it is the average number of cases per week. The higher the number, the more the cases. Also, higher number means more curfews, chances of lockdown, greater use of masks, and an exhausted healthcare sector. When we started planning for the trip in July, the number for Germany was less than 1. When we returned, it had become 11 which is quite high. Hungary was less than 1 when we went and changed to 2 when we left.

If the world is your oyster, consider opening google maps. Click on ‘Layers’ and then press ‘Covid info’. When you zoom into any country, you will be able to see the incidence rate of that place. That was our starting point.

The next thing to check is the positivity rate. This is the percentage of people who test positive of the number of tests taken. The more the testing, the better you feel about how the government is reacting to the pandemic. Germany was taking only 1 test per thousand of its population which is low in comparison to its neighbours, but the positivity rate was also low at 1%. It increased to 8% when we left.

It is also great to see a local website of the country which can be found by checking where Worldometer is taking its data from. For Germany,this website has comprehensive data.

Now those are a lot of statistics to look at before you travel. But if you want to be safe and feel comfortable during your travels, this is the best way to go. For some people, ignorance is bliss. That is clearly not the case with me. I am not paranoid, but I am not carefree either.

It is another thing that you forget all about these numbers when you are on a holiday. I did not check covid info even once while we were on the vacation because by then we had already taken the plunge! If the laws are not stringent, nobody wears masks in these countries. We were the only people in most places who were very serious about masks and sanitisers. My prime concern was that I don’t want to fall ill in a foreign country even though I was fully vaccinated and my risk of serious illness is very low.

Coming up next - How to get an EU Covid Digital Health Pass while in Germany/Europe and bits from the trip!