As we get into the winter holiday season—and the holiday travel season—you may be wondering when to get tested for COVID-19 before taking a trip. And new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) make the timeline very clear.
As a reminder, public health experts and the CDC continue to recommend that holiday travel should be avoided or postponed this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. has a record number of coronavirus infections right now and is adding a high number of new cases every day. Down the line, that will translate to an increase in hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19. Gathering with people outside of your household—especially if you or they are traveling from out-of-town—is one of the riskiest things you can do this holiday season.
“As cases continue to increase rapidly across the United States, the safest way to celebrate holidays is to celebrate at home with the people you live with,” the CDC says. But if you have to travel right now for whatever reason, it’s important to take as many precautions as possible.
One of those precautions is testing and figuring out when to get tested for COVID-19—before and after your trip. The timing of your test matters because we know that even the best coronavirus tests can miss positive cases, and that’s more likely to happen earlier in the infection.
That’s why the CDC recommends:
- Getting tested one to three days before your travel.
- Getting tested again three to five days after your travel.
- Reducing nonessential activities for 10 days after traveling if you decide not to get tested.
But because testing isn’t a 100% guarantee that you don’t have the infection or that you can’t spread it, it’s still important to take other precautions. “Testing does not eliminate all risk,” Henry Walke, M.D., COVID-19 incident manager for the CDC, said in a press call this week. “But when combined with reducing nonessential activities, symptom screening, and continuing with precautions like wearing masks, social distancing, and handwashing, it can make travel safer.”
Of course, if you have reason to believe you may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 during your travel or you start to develop symptoms, the recommendations are a little different. If you think you’ve been exposed, you should plan to quarantine yourself (ideally for 14 days, but there are shorter alternatives now, if work or other obligations make it truly impossible to stick with a longer quarantine) and monitor yourself for symptoms. If you develop symptoms at any point, you should stay home and get in touch with your doctor or other virtual medical care (through an urgent care center, for instance) for advice and instructions for getting tested.
We’ve all had to sacrifice quite a lot this year thanks to the pandemic, and it’s understandable that you’d want to find a way to make holiday gatherings and travel happen. But it really is in everyone’s best interest—now more than ever—to stay home if possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19. If you must travel right now, then it’s crucial to take all the precautions you can to keep yourself and those around you safe.