Fly me to the Moon - your 3rd travel Megathread - read OP

Hontou wrote: »

I have flights booked for the night of the 5th of July. I wonder would they fine us in the last hours? These are Ryanair flights that I changed 3 times since March 2020. I think I just lose the money if I try to change them again. I don't even want a refund. I want to live in a country that has viable airlines and support them.....unlike the government. And I want t be part of the EU............not some outstation dictatorship. (Sorry, Siochain for the moaning).

I think Siochain will have to put up with the moaning. Irish people don't moan enough imo. We're too prone to taking everything on the chin yet no denying that this country is becoming a miserable place. I'm not so young and suspect that some of those posters who moan the most are indeed the young, completely frustrated by the never ending misery. And who could blame them!

Moan away guys, it's probably all any of us can do.

Dreaming has to be done sure it’s what’s got many people through the last 12+ months. And I stand corrected moaning because of lack of travel opportunities i full understand. If we can keep the arguments out it would be great, we have all had enough stress and all need a break of our choosing.

Valhallapt wrote: »

How did you get on in Belfast, I am booked to go 28th June to Faro via Dublin, but really thinking of switching to Belfast now.

Tiny airport; flight at 7:55 is last of the day meaning arrival is post 11pm. Not ideal as have her a ****ty day followed by an actual gob****e at car rental desk. I watched him piss of 3 other people before he pissed me off as well.

I’m only here for a few days so drive to Belfast is no more inconvenient than flying to Lisbon and driving down. Car park is reasonable but not sure I’d park there for weeks.

Belfast airport was efficient, Like London City in the old days before it got crowded. Lots of non-NI Irish, teenagers, first year college students heading off on a jolly. The one beside me also only has 4 days as he has to be back to play for UCD in the “Irish league”. In the old days you’d have been shot for saying that rather than “League of Ireland”, like saying Irish FA instead of FAI.

ninebeanrows wrote: »

Do we know if 1 dose of vaccine is acceptable for the cert?

For some countries in the EU it is. E.g. Italy accepts the 'vaccinated' status of the Digital Covid Certificate 2 weeks after the 1st dose has been administered.


So I imagine the DCC will be issued to anybody who requests it regardless of vaccination/immunization/testing status. If you only have had 1 jab that'll be recorded and that may be enough to get you into some countries without furthers tests/quarantine etc. When coming back to Ireland you'll have to get a PCR test locally (also to be recorded on your DCC) as Ireland only considers you fully vaxxed after the 2nd dose.



It would be nice to get more homogeneous treatment across the EU but ultimately I think this is a reasonable arrangement to open up travel this summer.
Hopefully we wont hit any IT snags and everybody who needs a DCC will be given one before July 19th.

yoshimitsu wrote: »

For some countries in the EU it is. E.g. Italy accepts the 'vaccinated' status of the Digital Covid Certificate 2 weeks after the 1st dose has been administered.


So I imagine the DCC will be issued to anybody who requests it regardless of vaccination/immunization/testing status. If you only have had 1 jab that'll be recorded and that may be enough to get you into some countries without furthers tests/quarantine etc. When coming back to Ireland you'll have to get a PCR test locally (also to be recorded on your DCC) as Ireland only considers you fully vaxxed after the 2nd dose.

It would be nice to get more homogeneous treatment across the EU but ultimately I think this is a reasonable arrangement to open up travel this summer.
Hopefully we wont hit any IT snags and everybody who needs a DCC will be given one before July 19th.

Germany is 2 weeks after the 2nd dose, but do accept proof of vaccination in paper form, so if fully vaccinated before the 19th, the (hand filled) HSE card might be sufficient.

Proof of vaccination against COVID-19 in German, English, French, Italian or Spanish in digital or paper form (e.g. WHO vaccination booklet). The vaccine used must be one of those listed on the website of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut. A period of at least 14 days must have elapsed since receiving the last vaccine dose.

https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/einreiseundaufenthalt/EinreiseUndAufenthalt#9

Marine Layer wrote: »

Isn't the document issued to residents of your own country
Ireland won't be giving fully vaccinated status for one shot unless you have had the jaansen

yes my point being that you can enter Italy without any additional test/quarantine requirement with your DCC issued by Ireland even if you have only 1 shot done. so it doesnt matter if Ireland considers you fully vaccinated or not, what matters is that your first dose is recorded on your DCC (and you've been issues one obviously) before you leave

yoshimitsu wrote: »

yes my point being that you can enter Italy without any additional test/quarantine requirement with your DCC issued by Ireland even if you have only 1 shot done. so it doesnt matter if Ireland considers you fully vaccinated or not, what matters is that your first dose is recorded on your DCC (and you've been issues one obviously) before you leave

In Poland you are able to generate QR code (vaccine cert) after first vaccine shot and I’m guessing it will be possible in other countries. But I wouldn’t keep my hope that Ireland will allow that option.

Has anyone gone to Belfast on the train lately? Thinking of going next week to just get an airbnb and relax

yoshimitsu wrote: »

...
This is a key feature of the DCC so there's no reason why we shouldnt expect everyone who needs it to travel to get one, regardless of vaccination status.
...

You want everyone who travels to take an expensive PCR test, even if they're fully vaccinated, just because a software application facilitates it?
Sorry, I must have misunderstood something in your post.

josip wrote: »

You want everyone who travels to take an expensive PCR test, even if they're fully vaccinated, just because a software application facilitates it?
Sorry, I must have misunderstood something in your post.

I can confirm, you have misunderstood or i've explained myself poorly


The previous poster was concerned the DCC would be released in Ireland only after you are fully vaccinated. My point is that, since one of the key features of the DCC is to also record covid tests status (date, type and obviously result), the DCC should be issued to anybody intending to travel regardless of you vaccination status.



I dont want everybody to take PCR/antigen if they are fully (or even partially) vaccinated. the point of my original post was just that, some countries consider you fully vaxxed 2 weeks after your first shot (e.g. Italy) and that's potentially great news for me since that's where I'm traveling to this summer and it may save us some money and hassle. Hopefully my first jab will be recorded on there once I get it (I'm 44 and havent been called yet). I doubt I'll get my second jab before I leave (mid-July) so will mean I'll have to get a PCR test before coming back to Ireland. I dont like it but I'd rather take that than 2 PCR tests and 5 days of quarantine!

Its highly unlikely that every single covid testing provider in Ireland (or in other countries in Europe) will have its tech systems fully linked up to national/EU app verification in that way. We're talking 20+ providers in Ireland at the moment alone, some of them quite small medical operations.

Fair enough, I dont hold high hopes for Ireland, Italy and Spain (the 3 countries involved in my travelling this summer) to have everything sorted out by mid-July. my scenarios was more to justify the point of releasing the DCC regardless of your vaccination as it is a tool to record your testing status.

I dont think it's impossible that a couple of the larger testing providers, like Randox and RocDoc, who operate from the airport and will likely see the bulk of testing volumes (particularly if anigen gains broader acceptance as you would do this right before flying) to be linked in to the DCC systems but agree that this is science fiction at the moment given the other IT mess the HSE is dealing with atm

Theres also the question of people who've been tested outside of their home country. What if someone is traveling through Dublin airport but got tested by a Northern Irish provider? Or the same question but a French person traveling through Amsterdam airport? You're then talking of needing international test providers (in the hundreds, or thousands) fully integrated into the app.

Agree, there are many situations in which you'll just show the proof of negative test rather than the DCC but that shouldnt prevent you receiving a DCC when it's issued, regardless of your vaccination status. so that may also include a 1st jab status which is sufficient to enter certain EU countries without additional requirements

Its far more likely that you will just have to upload a screenshot of your test results, from wherever, directly to the app for them to then be verified by AI. Basically the same as immigration officers are currently doing manually in airports.

If you doubt IT systems being ready handle all this in July, I doubt AI will be the solution... but happy to be proven wrong here

The same process as I would expect for vaccination verification, incidentally. There are huge numbers of people getting vaccinated in countries other than their home country these days - Irish people in the US/UK in particular for us. Theres no way for the HSE to automatically verify these people to an app.

Yes expect these people to have to rely on some kind of paper document in the interim, if accepted by the country you're trying to visit.

Red Silurian wrote: »

So how are people feeling about the Indian Variant being in Ireland now. Seems the PCR 3 days before arriving did nothing for us in that regard

Meh, it and all subsequent variants will find there way in here regardless of what measures we take to curtail travel.

Time to accept it all now and move on

yoshimitsu wrote: »

Fair enough, I dont hold high hopes for Ireland, Italy and Spain (the 3 countries involved in my travelling this summer) to have everything sorted out by mid-July. my scenarios was more to justify the point of releasing the DCC regardless of your vaccination as it is a tool to record your testing status.

I dont think it's impossible that a couple of the larger testing providers, like Randox and RocDoc, who operate from the airport and will likely see the bulk of testing volumes (particularly if anigen gains broader acceptance as you would do this right before flying) to be linked in to the DCC systems but agree that this is science fiction at the moment given the other IT mess the HSE is dealing with atm

Agree, there are many situations in which you'll just show the proof of negative test rather than the DCC but that shouldnt prevent you receiving a DCC when it's issued, regardless of your vaccination status. so that may also include a 1st jab status which is sufficient to enter certain EU countries without additional requirements

If you doubt IT systems being ready handle all this in July, I doubt AI will be the solution... but happy to be proven wrong here

Yes expect these people to have to rely on some kind of paper document in the interim, if accepted by the country you're trying to visit.

Its not possible to limit the number of test providers to only those at airports, though. Significant numbers of people travel from hours away to fly out of Dublin airport (or any large continental one). Its not practical to require them to travel to the airport 24+ hours beforehand to do a PCR test and wait for the result. You need to have a network of test providers countrywide, as we currently have. Which then leads to the issue of having thousands of test providers all across Europe.

One of the main goals of the travel pass is to reduce the time spent at airports on document checks, because its not possible to have anywhere near normal airport traffic with the new required document checks without massive, hours long, immigration queues forming - see Heathrow in recent times for example. So its very unlikely vaccinated people will be forced to rely on paper certs instead of simply uploading photos of them to the app, if thats how PCR test results are being verified anyway.

AI for document checking already exists, and is in very common usage. Thats not a technical issue at all. A similar example would be online companies that need to verify photo ID for Know Your Customer requirements.

Basically - if in doubt, the easiest solution is the one that will be used. Which in this case is very much simple AI verification of uploaded vaccination/testing results that spits out a QR code to match your details for instant scanning at the airport. Not a continent wide, fully integrated, medical data system, across thousands of providers.

Blut2 wrote: »

Its not possible to limit the number of test providers to only those at airports, though. Significant numbers of people travel from hours away to fly out of Dublin airport (or any large continental one). Its not practical to require them to travel to the airport 24+ hours beforehand to do a PCR test and wait for the result. You need to have a network of test providers countrywide, as we currently have. Which then leads to the issue of having thousands of test providers all across Europe.

One of the main goals of the travel pass is to reduce the time spent at airports on document checks, because its not possible to have anywhere near normal airport traffic with the new required document checks without massive, hours long, immigration queues forming - see Heathrow in recent times for example. So its very unlikely vaccinated people will be forced to rely on paper certs instead of simply uploading photos of them to the app, if thats how PCR test results are being verified anyway.

AI for document checking already exists, and is in very common usage. Thats not a technical issue at all. A similar example would be online companies that need to verify photo ID for Know Your Customer requirements.

Basically - if in doubt, the easiest solution is the one that will be used. Which in this case is very much simple AI verification of uploaded vaccination/testing results that spits out a QR code to match your details for instant scanning at the airport. Not a continent wide, fully integrated, medical data system, across thousands of providers.

I'm not suggesting limiting the number of testing centers only to those in Dublin airport and forcing everyone to use those. I'm simply saying that you dont have to connect the IT systems of every testing center in Ireland from day 1 of the DCC. You could/should focus on the largest ones that most people are likely to use, that way you'll address one of the points you raise later (reducing time spent at the airport, avoiding longer queues as everybody shows up with a paper based test result).


Not sure about your proposal about uploading photos/QR codes to the DCC app. Sure it's feasible but unlikely it'll be ready by July/August this year.

Probably easier to connect the 2 largest testing providers in your largest airport as that will no doubt bring the number of paper-based results to check down