Canadian Snowbirds heading home-Antigen Rapid Tests required

[Canuck_Travelle]

Seeing that soon there will be a swell of Canadian Snowbirds heading home and seeing the protocol at the border is a requirement of a certified Rapid Test (Antigen) test not more than 24 hours prior to crossing has anyone crossed yet or know of anyone crossing?

Anyone have any more info on this like did they or do they know of anyone crossing, where did they get the test, costs, was it certified, was there any problem at the border showing the Border personnel the test and acceptance.

Really appreciate any info, thanks....

[Canuck_Travelle]

Rapid test gone April 1st when crossing into Canada....however....

ArriveCAN app still required....half a load is better than none!

Reports: Canada planning to drop border testing requirement | Tri-City Herald
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/state/washington/article259465749.html

Passengers still could subject to random PCR testing at the airport and travelers will still have to use the ArriveCAN app to submit their proof of vaccination and other required information, according to CTV.

Read more at: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/state/washington/article259465749.html#storylink=cpy

[pawatt]

From CBC
The federal government will announce Thursday that Canada will end its pre-entry COVID-19 testing requirement for fully vaccinated travellers by the end of the month, CBC News has learned.

Sources with knowledge of the matter confirm Canada is removing the testing requirements at airports and land border crossings. The ministers of health, transport and tourism will hold a press conference Thursday morning to announce the changes to border measures.

Currently, travellers entering the country must show proof of a negative antigen or molecular test prior to their flight or arrival at the border.

That testing requirement will be dropped by April 1 for fully vaccinated travellers, the sources said.

From CBC

The move comes two years into the pandemic as travel picks up and provinces and territories end restrictions involving vaccine passports, gatherings and masks.

The federal government will continue to randomly test travellers upon arrival in Canada to identify and track variants, the sources said. The government has been spending millions of dollars on randomly testing vaccinated travellers entering Canada.

[moisheh]

Here is the news from cbc
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-government-to-drop-pre-departure-testing-1.6386763

[pawatt]

Copied from Snowbird aka winter Texan group.
--------------'
News for Canadians
As of April 1, the federal government will be lifting the pre-arrival COVID-19 testing requirement for fully vaccinated travellers, CTV News has learned. Passengers may still be subjected to random testing at the airport, according to a senior government source.

[moisheh]

I understood that the next change to any protocols was April. Would sure be great if it was soon. One of our neighbors in Mexico spends a month or 2 in Kino. She is from Winnipeg and does not have a smart phone. She was very worried about how she is going to handle the test while overnighting in Phoenix. Hard to get the results before you leave. Too much planning and just more stress for nothing. We are leaving after Easter and hope that we will not have to worry about a useless test.

[Canuck_Travelle]

Just got a text from an Insider says;
"They are going to remove the testing on the border, maybe announced tomorrow."

Hope he's right....we will see, didn't mention the silly app but if the test goes I imagine so goes the useless app.

[Canuck_Travelle]

moisheh wrote:
Forget all this discussion about Data. Canada is closing our tourist industry for no apparent reason. The rapid test is not very accurate. As I stated previously if the border needs a rapid test then returning to your home province from a known area of Covid transmission should also need a rapid test. Of course that is ridiculous. But so is the requirement for a test at the border. A big hassle for Snowbirds.

I agree with you totally, the Rapid Test at the border is absolutely useless, just another kind of control that is put in place to force you to "get in line" along with the ArriveCAN app..its even worse, totally totally unnecessary as it's mainly about your vaccination which you must have on you to cross the border both ways.

As to the data, yeah enough, my only reason for it was to illustrate the change in the COVID-19 numbers, the USA was extremely high since the beginning but now if you believe the site I gave is much lower and in reality from observation is much lower...so to Federal Border Authority rules....drop this silly requirement and more to the point Rapid Tests are known to be very undependable anyway.

If you truly believe in doing away with these protocols contact your MP, write him by email, it's easy they all have their email on their Government Site, more letters, more pressure, they will act.

[moisheh]

Forget all this discussion about Data. Canada is closing our tourist industry for no apparent reason. The rapid test is not very accurate. As I stated previously if the border needs a rapid test then returning to your home province from a known area of Covid transmission should also need a rapid test. Of course that is ridiculous. But so is the requirement for a test at the border. A big hassle for Snowbirds.

[Canuck_Travelle]

JaxDad wrote:

Canuck Travellers wrote:
Got mine from a very reliable source ie as shown in the last post or below;

COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

From a recent article on ‘news’ sites;

“Max Roser, a researcher at Oxford University and founder of Our World In Data, has expressed frustration at the site. He tweeted: “I’m annoyed by Worldometer because it wastes so much of my and my team’s time. For weeks we get messages of people asking why do we not show this or that – ‘Worldometer has the data’. And too often when you look into it, they provide no source or it is wrong.” He says the site has made mistakes in reporting test numbers, in its labelling of metrics,
and confusion of case fatality rate with infection fatality rate. ”

Oh, well if you can't trust John Hopkins and these recognized entities who can you trust...LOL
BTW what's your source, please put in a link....if you can do that, if you need help just ask.
Negativity is always easy to find but as always not so easy to backup.

Worldometer's Covid-19 data is trusted and used by Johns Hopkins CSSE, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, and many others.

Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been trusted by: Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, United Nations Rio+20. and many others.

[JaxDad]

Canuck Travellers wrote:
Got mine from a very reliable source ie as shown in the last post or below;

COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

From a recent article on ‘news’ sites;

“Max Roser, a researcher at Oxford University and founder of Our World In Data, has expressed frustration at the site. He tweeted: “I’m annoyed by Worldometer because it wastes so much of my and my team’s time. For weeks we get messages of people asking why do we not show this or that – ‘Worldometer has the data’. And too often when you look into it, they provide no source or it is wrong.” He says the site has made mistakes in reporting test numbers, in its labelling of metrics, and confusion of case fatality rate with infection fatality rate. ”

[Canuck_Travelle]

Got mine from a very reliable source ie as shown in the last post or below;

COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Bring up the site, look at the data, it's all there.
If you have a problem let me know, always like to help.

We are looking at NEW CASES. You might have to above the tables click on yesterday to fill the numbers in.
When you do bring up the site give it a few seconds to fill in all the world's countries, go below the graphs to the tables for all countries. USA is at the top, Canada is at number 31. Click on the USA to bring up the States, they are all listed.

BTW New York had yesterday 3305 cases, Florida had 1201, the USA had 25,359 yesterday, Canada had 4274....

USA has 81,244,936 total cases, 992,302 deaths, total cases per million in USA is 243,030 or 24% of the total population has or has had COVID-19

Canada has 3,373,776 total cases, 36,993 total deaths, total cases per million in Canada is 88,078 or approximately 8.8% of the total population has or has had COVID-19.

All the data is there, great site, updated daily.

Some info about the site....
Official reports, directly from Government's communication channels or indirectly, through local media sources when deemed reliable. We provide the source of each data update in the "Latest Updates" (News) section. Timely updates are made possible thanks to the participation of users around the world and to the dedication of a team of analysts and researchers who validate data from an ever-growing list of over 5,000 sources. Learn more

Worldometer's Covid-19 data is trusted and used by Johns Hopkins CSSE, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, and many others.

Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been trusted by: Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, United Nations Rio+20. and many others.

[JaxDad]

Canuck Travellers wrote:

joebedford wrote:

pianotuna wrote:
The time to slam the border shut was 2 years ago. We didn't.

I think the soon to be here peak of BA.2 will justify the border being shut. Hopefully it will pass by winter and I won't have to miss a third snowbirding trip.

Not to worry....
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/is-omicron-subvariant-bapoint2-to-blame-for-rising-covid-cases.html

Dr. Andrew Freedman, an academic covering infectious disease at Cardiff Medical School, told CNBC he doesn’t think we need to be too concerned about BA.2, despite the fact that it is slightly more contagious.

“I suspect the rising number of cases is related to several factors including BA.2, the relaxation of restrictions and more social mixing, less mask wearing and some waning of immunity from both previous infections and vaccination, especially in those who received boosters early on,” he said.

“There has been an upturn in hospital admissions testing positive for Covid in the U.K., but many of these are incidental and there has not been a parallel increase in deaths.”

For further that cases are dropping check the World Coronavirus Site....

COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Go to Florida, look at the number of cases for a state of 21.6 million population, latest numbers are for 3 day moving average are 898, pretty small for their population, look at USA number of new cases; 18,714, now look at Canada's new cases, they are number 31 and their cases are;3,057.

Roughly the USA is 10 times the population so it should be 30,057 (3,057 X 10) but it's only 18,714.

So according to the latest numbers the USA is doing better than Canada. Of course that's not the way it was in the past two years but now if one can take the official COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer data its much safer there than in Canada....check it out!

I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers from, but they seem a little off.

The NY Times reported the national US count as 49,042 new cases on the 14th, not 18,714.

The Canadian number is 4,079 for the 14th of March.

Canada has 11.4% of the population, so that would be 5,590 cases comparatively. Instead irs 27% lower than that.

[Canuck_Travelle]

joebedford wrote:

pianotuna wrote:
The time to slam the border shut was 2 years ago. We didn't.

I think the soon to be here peak of BA.2 will justify the border being shut. Hopefully it will pass by winter and I won't have to miss a third snowbirding trip.

Not to worry....
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/is-omicron-subvariant-bapoint2-to-blame-for-rising-covid-cases.html

Dr. Andrew Freedman, an academic covering infectious disease at Cardiff Medical School, told CNBC he doesn’t think we need to be too concerned about BA.2, despite the fact that it is slightly more contagious.

“I suspect the rising number of cases is related to several factors including BA.2, the relaxation of restrictions and more social mixing, less mask wearing and some waning of immunity from both previous infections and vaccination, especially in those who received boosters early on,” he said.

“There has been an upturn in hospital admissions testing positive for Covid in the U.K., but many of these are incidental and there has not been a parallel increase in deaths.”

For further that cases are dropping check the World Coronavirus Site....

COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Go to Florida, look at the number of cases for a state of 21.6 million population, latest numbers are for 3 day moving average are 898, pretty small for their population, look at USA number of new cases; 18,714, now look at Canada's new cases, they are number 31 and their cases are;3,057.

Roughly the USA is 10 times the population so it should be 30,057 (3,057 X 10) but it's only 18,714.

So according to the latest numbers the USA is doing better than Canada. Of course that's not the way it was in the past two years but now if one can take the official COVID Live - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer data its much safer there than in Canada....check it out!

[joebedford]

pianotuna wrote:
The time to slam the border shut was 2 years ago. We didn't.

I think the soon to be here peak of BA.2 will justify the border being shut. Hopefully it will pass by winter and I won't have to miss a third snowbirding trip.

[pianotuna]

The time to slam the border shut was 2 years ago. We didn't.

Bureaucracies are dinosaurs. The head makes a decision and it takes months for sensible charges to be made.