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Travel concerns


Cookster

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Wanting to travel to UK in July/August, flights are really good at the moment.   But have concerns about Corona virus.
Being a type 2 diabetic, a few more concerns than normal about sitting on a plane/ airports for hours. 
Anyone else have concerns?

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Difficult to say.  One thing would be to to check if any insurance will be valid if you book now, knowing their could be issues down the line.  Also make sure you have health insurance to cover you, just being a UK citizen doesn’t cut it now you need to prove residency to get NHS treatment. 
We booked our upcoming holiday long before the virus outbreak so we should be covered if we can’t go.  We are booked for Bangkok and Koh Samui to meet friends from UK who are travelling via Hong Kong.  Remains to be seen if it will all go ahead though. I don’t fancy a spell on Christmas Island on our return or being in isolation in Thailand. 
Unless authorities advise otherwise we still intend to go though, we are both in our late 50s and in good health.

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The question is, if you don't travel in July or August, when will you go?    Will it be any safer in September?   December?  Next March?   We don't know, because we don't know how long the epidemic will last.  And there will definitely be an epidemic. 

Governments have been trying to contain the virus in the hope it could be stamped out, like SARS.  That has failed already.  All governments are doing now is trying to slow the spread, to give them time to get hospitals and medical supplies geared up to cope with the inevitable epidemic.  And once it starts, we don't know how long it will last. 

 Right now, I think it makes sense to avoid travelling overseas.   The virus is spreading fast in the community in the UK, the US, Africa and Europe, whereas here, it's still fairly contained so we can still enjoy our normal lives. 

However, I think even Australia is on the brink of losing control.   Once the epidemic hits Australia, we'll have some tough decisions to make.  Are we all going to hide in our homes for the next 9 months (which is the earliest end date being suggested by experts)?   If you're going to decide to continue life as normal, then you might as well go the whole hog and travel.

We won't have a real solution until the vaccine comes out, but that's not likely to be widely available until the end of next year, if then.

   

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/04/coronavirus-epidemic-in-uk-is-likely-says-chief-medical-officer

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4 hours ago, Cookster said:

Wanting to travel to UK in July/August, flights are really good at the moment.   But have concerns about Corona virus.
Being a type 2 diabetic, a few more concerns than normal about sitting on a plane/ airports for hours. 
Anyone else have concerns?

Yep, be daft not too. We are booked for July to go to a wedding and supposed to be going to Majorca with my Sister and nieces and families. If it's not seriously improved by then we will just have to make a decision nearer the time.

May be not worth taking the risk with health.

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Not only the health risks. I don’t fancy spending my holiday quarantined in Thailand, monitoring this closely. Unless the advice is not to travel then we won’t get a refund though. 
We are holding off booking the final hotel in Bangkok for this reason, tbh the prices can only come down anyway. 
 

Not sure I would be booking now unless I know I could get a full refund if I decided not to go!

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 A lot of speculation at the moment at work around the wisdom of sitting in a plane for XX hours and hanging around crowds in an airport as we travel alot, but thats been actively discouraged at the moment.

Some details covered in the ABC Coronacast podcast yesterday.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/gyms-are-sweaty-are-they-risky/12044196

The virus doesn't travel through the air, only by actual droplets being transferred (from a cough or sneeze) to your skin and then into your nose/mouth by you touching your face. Unless you are near an infected person at the time they cough or sneeze you are not at risk.

Right now there are not very many infected people so the risk is quite low, who knows by easter / july / christmas etc etc etc

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