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Comment by bb2018 | Hacker News Reader

bb2018·

I wonder if they (or similar places) will decide to open tourism if they can test everyone coming in and out.

Don't think so. Testing on entry doesn't really help because the tourist could be incubating the virus. We have to quarantine and not many tourists want to spend the first two weeks of their holiday locked in a hotel room.

In the medium term the main hope for tourism is a) domestic and b) Australia also achieving elimination and opening our border to them.

There might also be some creative options to explore. E.g. let people pay big $$$ to be whisked away to an isolated luxury lodge (government approved!) for the first two weeks of their holiday.

Huh, with enough testing kits (and 2 day turnaround time on them?), why not test every arriving tourist, and quarantine them for 2 days until their test returns negative. Of course there's a danger that they get infected between the test and the quarantine (e.g. they share a bus to the quarantine location with an infected), so if someone you may have come into contact with is infected, then your 2 day quarantine becomes a 14 day one (or can they retest you on e.g. day 4 and let you go on day 6?)

It might be the case that a seven day quarantine with a test on the fifth day (for example) would be enough, but I imagine their government would want to see data confirming that.

It's probably not the case that someone can be tested on arrival and assumed not to be incubating the virus at as-of-yet undetectable levels.

I'm not an expert but my understanding is that you can be infected and test negative for several days before becoming infectious and testing positive.

It seems like it would be a good idea to test people on arrival and before leaving quarantine, AND quarantine them for 14 days. I think China does this, and I think NZ doesn't, and I don't know why we don't.

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