Can you fly with COVID? What to do if you test positive.
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Travelers across the globe faced delays and cancellations as airlines were brought to a near halt.
I just tested positive for COVID-19. Should I travel anyway?
Variations of that question are spiking on Google Search ( as we experience a significant surge in both summer travel and new coronavirus cases.
If you travel for work or pleasure and haven’t yet dealt with the question of whether to fly with COVID-19, chances are at some point you will.
President Joe Biden just tested positive while campaigning in Las Vegas. Several Tour de France riders are also dealing with the latest bout of COVID-19. And I picked it up earlier this month during a recent cross-country trip, testing positive just two days before I was supposed to fly to Alaska to help my parents − ages 79 and 85 − move out of their recently sold family home.
Ethically, I didn’t feel right about getting on a plane knowing I had COVID-19 and certainly couldn’t show up to my parent’s house with the virus. But the last-second scramble to rebook the trip, with our dog, my husband, and my parents still needing my help, was super-stressful.
Should I fly if I just tested positive for COVID?
Technically, you can fly sick − no one is going to stop you at the gate and swab your nose − but you shouldn’t.
Just because the airlines no longer require you to show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test ahead of your international flight, as they sometimes did during the earlier years of the pandemic, doesn’t mean travel should be a germ free-for-all.
“I suggest that you not fly,” Vicki Sowards, director of nursing resources at Passport Health, wrote via email. “You can expose the other travelers on your flight, and the process of traveling can contribute to fatigue and an increase in symptoms.”
If you know you have COVID-19, or think you might, you should not get on a plane, according to health experts, the CDC, and everyone who weighed in on my social media pages this past week.
“Should you travel if you have COVID? Absolutely not. Other people are immunocompromised, so essentially, you could kill innocent people,” says 56-year-old Nick Longo from Corpus Christi, Texas. Longo travels outside America “at least once a year” and flies within the U.S. frequently. “Do I think a lot of people are flying with it right now? Yes. People who don’t care about others are (flying).That’s why it spread.”
Mike Hensley, 54, of Northern California, agrees.
“It’s a simple answer,” he wrote. “No. You should not travel. That’s how viruses spread quickly. But yes, I am sure people are traveling while positive because they think it’s a seasonal allergy or cold, have convinced themselves they don’t feel that bad, or are already on the upswing (and don’t know/care about how viruses work) or are simply just selfish and don’t care about the people they are exposing.”
I’ve been on a dozen planes over the past few months, and anecdotally, it’s true that a lot of people are sniffling, sneezing and coughing − with nary a mask in sight.
Another traveler told me she knew…
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