The Amazing Race 34, Episode 5

Amman (Jordan)

COVID-19 testing

[Vending machine at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. The top row, left to right, has either a pack of five FFP2 face masks (FFP2 is the European standard equivalent to N95 in the USA) or a COVID-19 fast antigen self-test, either for EUR2.99 (approximately US$3).]

Will and Abby were eliminated from The Amazing Race 34 not because they finished last in this leg of the reality-TV race but because they tested positive for COVID-19 after the previous episode was filmed.

That’s a reminder both of the ongoing risk of infection with COVID-19, even if you have had it already and/or have been vaccinated, and of the continued importance of COVID-19 testing, even if it is no longer required by law for travel to, from, or within most countries.

Choosing to resume some travel doesn’t have to mean, and shouldn’t mean, ignoring the risks to ourselves and others of COVID-19 infection. If the COVID-19 pandemic is over, that’s only because COVID-19 is now endemic. We don’t have to travel exactly the same way we did before the pandemic. COVID-19 self-testing before and after especially risky activities (large indoor gatherings, long flights or train or bus rides, etc.) or if we feel sick — the same protocols as are now followed during filming of The Amazing Race and other Hollywood movies and TV shows — is one of the important changes we can and should make in our travel habits for the indefinite future.

One of my friends noted this week that almost everyone they know who has resumed travelling extensively, whatever their reasons for travel, has soon been infected with COVID-19 or with some other variety of flu or cold. COVID-19 testing is the only way we will know whether we have been infected (and are at risk of infecting others) with COVID-19, or with some “common” cold or flu that poses much less of a risk of death or long-term illness to ourselves and others. That can guide our decisions about whether to continue our trip, whether or how to interact with other people or to self-quarantine, and what other actions to take to reduce the risks to ourselves and others.

COVID-19 testing for travel has been discussed primarily in terms of government requirements for testing, most of which have been ended except in China. But self-testing remains important to knowing whether to quarantine, seek treatment, or change your travel plans. Testing is essential if you don’t want to impose additional risks on your travelling companions, hosts, and other contacts.

Vaccinations and booster shots reduce the risk of infection with COVID-19 and the risk of death if you are infected. But I know people who are still suffering life-changing long-term effects of “long COVID” contracted after they had been vaccinated. I don’t want long COVID, and I don’t want to feel responsible for giving it to my loved ones or anyone else. Self-testing before and during travel can reduce that risk.

Don’t get on a plane or leave on an overnight trip without testing yourself first and having several COVID-19 rapid self-tests with you. Self-test kits are inexpensive (free from some public health services and HMOs in the USA), lightweight, and don’t take up much space in your luggage. Bring three or four tests per person, so that you can test yourself before your return flight and so that if you test positive while you are away from home, you and any travelling companions who are also likely to have been exposed can test yourselves again before leaving self-quarantine.

If you start to feel sick, or find out that you have been exposed to COVID-19 (e.g. because a travelling companion or other close contact tests positive), you don’t want to delay your own treatment or compound others’ exposure to your possible infection by having to go out shopping for COVID-19 tests, especially in an unfamiliar city and/or country where you may not know where to find them.

When I arrived at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam last week, on my first trip abroad in two and a half years, the first thing I saw after customs and immigration was a kiosk dispensing masks and other personal protective equipment and supplies. A vending machine in the same area had COVD-19 rapid antigen self-tests for sale for EUR2.99 (about US$3) each. But I haven’t seen anything like this at an airport in the USA. (If you have, please let me know where that was.) COVID-19 test kits have, unsurprisingly and like everything else, been affected by supply chain problems from time to time and place to place. Get test kits before you travel.

The cast members eliminated from The Amazing Race 34 had a TV production crew and location support staff to find them a place to quarantine and arrange for meal delivery, follow-up testing to confirm they were no longer infectious, and rescheduled transportation home. If you are travelling on your own, you will have to take care of all this for yourself.

Don’t leave home without thinking about what you will do if, at any stage of your planned trip, you become ill and/or test positive for COVID-19. Don’t risk putting yourself in a situation in which you are tempted to endanger others by, say, flying home sick or knowingly infected (as many people undoubtably do) because you can’t find a place to quarantine yourself, or can’t afford to do so. I probably should have had more of a quarantine “Plan B” than I did for some portions of my latest trip.

Consider travel insurance if you can find a plan that explicitly covers COVID-19 quarantine expenses if a self-test is positive. Most hotels will probably allow you to overstay your reservation if you are infectious and no official quarantine facility is available. (I’d welcome readers’ experiences with this. Where were you, and what happened?) But rack rate for a single room, plus the cost of room service or food delivery, or the non-negotiable per diem fee for as long as an official quarantine facility is required, could get expensive.

This week’s episode of The Amazing Race 34 took place entirely in Amman, Jordan.

Amman is often given short shrift, even by visitors to Jordan, in favor of Petra and Wadi Rum (which we saw in the previous episode of The Amazing Race) and beach resorts around Aqaba. But most people I know who have been to Amman say they wish they had planned to spend more time there.

Jordan has absorbed successive waves of refugees from every neighboring country, including from what is now Israel, Iraq, and Syria. If the USA is a country inhabited mainly by immigrants and their descendants, Jordan is a country inhabited, to a larger extent than almost any other in the world, by refugees and their descendants. If that seems off-putting, it shouldn’t be: It helps makes Jordan, and Amman in particular as its capital and principal city, an especially diverse, cosmopolitan, and for those reasons interesting place to visit.

The best account I know of independent travel in Jordan, and of Amman as a regional crossroads for expats and visitors, is Pamela J. Olson’s Fast Times in Palestine (Seal Press, 2013). Olson’s perspective is unusual and valuable as that of a foreigner who arrived with few preconceived notions of what she would find, was neither Muslim nor Jewish, and immersed herself in multiple communities. She also describes what it’s like to cross the various international and internal borders within and between Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. Reading Fast Times in Palestine made me more eager to visit Amman myself.