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I try out the British Airways ‘Return to England’ £33 Covid test from Qured

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British Airways has partnered with a number of Covid testing companies since the start of the pandemic, most of which are PCR testing providers.

It has now announced a new partnership with Qured (pronounced ‘cured’…..) to offer a £33 inbound test that satisfies the requirement for a negative Covid test before arriving in England.

The process is quite clever, and lets you avoid the hassle of trying to find a test provider in the country you are visiting. It is based on a lateral flow antigen test, which means it isn’t totally accurate but better than nothing ….

Qured Lateral flow test kit

It is also much cheaper than a PCR test – £33 with BA’s discount code – making it a cost-effective way of testing before you return to the UK.

Here is how it works:

  • You order your test before you depart the UK and take the kit with you
  • You schedule a video call with Qured up to three days before your return flight to carry out the test
  • You receive your results and a test certificate within 20 minutes

British Airways offered to let me test the service – so I did!

I gave the Qured test a trial

Ordering the home test kit is easy and can be done on the Qured website. The headline price is £39 but the BA promo code ‘BATRAVEL15‘ will reduce this to £33.

You have to select a reason for the test – which can include a simple diagnostic if you just want to check your Covid status – but in this case you should choose the ‘Return to the UK’ option:

Qured reason

You also have to enter a few personal details including your address.

The test kit arrives via free next-day delivery, provided you book before 3pm. It is all in a small box that you can easily pack into a bag or suitcase.

Once booked, you can schedule a call with a health advisor to take your test and get your results validated. This ensures that you perform the test correctly and don’t cheat, as this test has been validated by Public Health England as a valid way of entering the UK.

You can book this call for whenever you want and there are plenty of slots available, although they are limited to 9am-6pm UK time.

Cleverly, you don’t actually have an appointment with an individual advisor: instead you join an online queue and wait to be attended. This took a matter of seconds for me, and means that it doesn’t matter if you are a few minutes early or late for your slot.

On the call, the Qured health advisor will take you through the process of swabbing and performing the test. If you’ve done a lateral flow test before you are probably familiar with the process, which essentially requires you to dunk your swab in the liquid before dropping it onto the test cassette itself.

I will spare you the vivid details of my self-swabbing. Residents of South London will be pleased to know that I tested negative.

(Somebody can correct me on this but I assume C means ‘control’ to ensure the test has been carried out correctly and and T is for the actual Covid ‘test’ result.)

Once the 20 minutes are up you can take a photo of your test with your ID and send it to Qured. Qured will verify it and send you a test certificate in return.

You can upload your certificate into BA’s VeriFLY app if you wish, which will speed up your time at check-in.

The whole process was quick and easy thanks to the guidance from the health advisor, and got me a Government-accepted certificate within an hour.

It will be interesting to see how testing requirements evolve with the rollout of vaccines, although I imagine they will be here in one form or another for some time. These cheap and effective lateral flow tests are a great way of testing for your return.


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Comments (116)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Jamesay says:

    No wonder foreigners are confused as much as people here are about our national identity/ identities. British (note that word) Airways promotes a product marked Return To England. In case no one noticed, last time I looked, Britain consisted of more than one country…. your article also confuses U.K. with Britain. Duh!

    • lumma says:

      Are you allowed to use one of these tests to arrive in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland? Maybe that’s why it’s called “return to England”

      • Michael C says:

        Exactly: as if it were “AA introduces Return to California test”

    • Rich says:

      The four nations have devolved responsibility for public health. Surely you’ve noticed the differences in policy over the last year? This test is only appropriate if you’re returning to England.

      If you’re flying directly into Scotland, or flying to Newcastle but returning to Berwick, or a thousand other permutations, you need to jump through different hoops

      • RYAN says:

        Issue is the article refers to the UK several times when really its only appropriate for England.

      • tony says:

        I know it’s changed sides a few times and there’s a great urban myth about Berwick still technically being at war with Russia, but the town is currently in England, not Scotland.

        • Alex Sm says:

          And ironically they keep a good stash of Russian cannons in one of the parks to defend them in that war which is still on

      • Alex Sm says:

        Berwick is in England

  • southlondonphil says:

    The reason “it took seconds” to get a ‘consultation’ is likely because virtually nobody is using them right now. A 777-full of passengers attempting to dial-in from Los Angeles in the short window of availability between 9 and 10am local time (or after 1am if you’re a ‘night owl’) will change that.

    • mradey says:

      ROFL.- I like it. Rarely am I awake at 1am in Los Angeles and if I am , I am certainly in no fit state to administer this 🙂

  • Clare Cheney says:

    If you test positive presumably you have to stay where you are. Then what?

    • mradey says:

      Then your insurance kicks in…..

    • George1976 says:

      No holiday/trip for you then obvs

      • Rob says:

        Er, you’re already on holiday.

        BA guarantees to let you change your flight.

        • George1976 says:

          Er yeah good point 🤣

          Good luck telling your employer that you won’t be coming back to work as expected though (working exclusively from home won’t continue for too much longer and people will need to go into work even if it’s just a day a week. Also, not everyone can work from home).

          • Alex Sm says:

            This should be a very weird employer if they didn’t allow some flexibility which is now a norm. And would still want an employee tested positive in the workplace!

  • Paul says:

    These test are very far from accurate. They do pick up high viral loads but fail to record up to 60% of infections, so a negative result is worthless and probably explains why the pathetic border control measures result in so many travel related infections spreading around.
    These are the same tests being used in schools where the are equally useless and there will be a spike in infections, albeit a small one, by Easter.

    • Paul says:

      Perhaps we should insist on a test with at least 99.99% accuracy, and that once administered the traveller is hermetically sealed into a zorbing ball until reaching home, and then be quarantined for at least 20 days?

      • Paul says:

        I imagine that the families of the 130,000 dead (the worst death rate in the developed world) had wished we had done more hermetically sealing.
        Or maybe that we did not had such a disregard for human life and dealt with things along the lines of other developed, civilised nations. Those whose leaders took swift, strong action have neither the the same death rates or economic misery. I for one would rather be in Australia, New Zealand, Korea ( my old stomping ground) or a range of other countries where they put life first and have subsequently reaped the rewards for doing so.

    • Simon says:

      I would bet my house on there not being any ‘spike’ in infections as a result of schools returning. You do realise that most schools have been 30-50% full all through lockdown despite the restrictions – due to a combination of genuine frontline parents, and a lot of other parents simply taking the p—.

      • Rob says:

        Should have sent mine back – bank employees are actually classed as key workers, which includes investment bankers. They would have learnt more.

        I did like the story of the dog walker who sent her kids back because some of her dog walking clients are NHS staff, and they wouldn’t be able to go work if she wasn’t walking their dogs.

      • Zoe says:

        My husband is a Chair of Governors at a local primary school, the government criteria were too wide this time and most schools needed to introduce further restrictions. Most parents understood the issue but over 150 man hours were spend on one parental complaint.

        • Andrew says:

          150 hours…

          Highlighting the extremes that some organisations will go to deny a valid complaint.

      • Peter Taysum says:

        Interestingly closing educational establishments has been found to be the second most effective strategy at stopping the spread of Covid infections when looking at the world meta data.

        Perhaps gambling’s not for you?

    • Callum says:

      If they’re catching 40% of infections then it very clearly isn’t worthless… Unless you think it’s feasible to replace them all with PCR tests?

  • Michael C says:

    How do you actually “swab”?!

    • Ken says:

      The swap is like a long (15cm) cotton bud. You basically have to roll it round the back of your throat for about 10 seconds. Makes you gag.
      Not sure what they do about people who wave it round their mouth. In the community testing environment this would come back as insufficient or inadequate sample & you went back and did it properly.

      • Michael C says:

        Cheers, Ken – I was indeed thinking about what happens if it’s not done “properly” and you only have one kit.

    • Tracey says:

      LFT generally require you to swab your nose only. Stick it up each nostril and twirl it for a few seconds.

      • Rob says:

        How do the anal Chinese tests which arriving passengers need to do work?

        • AJA says:

          You don’t stick it up your nose for starters….

          Seriously the mind boggles with that test, can’t be pleasant either to have it administered or to be the person administering it.

      • Lady London says:

        And it b***dy hurts if done with too wide a cotton-bud-on-long-stick.

    • Alex Sm says:

      Finger prick or vein? I just wonder if they have developed good antibodies finger prick tests at all

  • Jenny W says:

    Thanks for this, very timely. I’ve just ordered one as flying to the States on Sunday to be with my dad a LPR who’s having a heart operation next week, and was worried about organising the return test- fingers crossed this will work. Looking forward to seeing my dad but full of trepidation regarding the journey itself – and I love travelling

    • Harry T says:

      Hope your Dad’s operation goes well and your travels are smooth!

  • roberto says:

    @Rob how long were you on the phone for please? I was thinking that if its the full 20 mins then an advisor will be able to do 3 people and hour. Lets assume people work 8 hours a day that 24 passengers per per day. If Ba start landing just 8000 passengers a day they will need somewhere near 500 staff to cover the uptake allowing for some slack. Its a huge start up cost for something that might only be around for 6 months.

    • ChrisC says:

      It was Rhys who did this not Rob.

      You’d be online with an advisor for 5minutes at the most for the sample taking.

      Then, as per the article, after 20 minutes you take a photo and email it to them.

      You aren’t waiting on line having a nice chat about your holidays for 20 minutes for the test to do it’s stuff.

      Allowing 5 minutes per person that’s 12 an hour per advisor.

  • Roger says:

    Am I missing something? What is to stop someone simply “photoshopping” a certificate, substituting name/date as required?

    • meta says:

      That’s what’s happening already even with PCR tests certificate.

      In some countries the border officials actually call the lab to verify. I don’t think they do in the UK. In my birth country they are really hot on this. You can’t leave the airport without the officials verifying with the lab.

      • Mikeact says:

        And your birth country is ?

      • Pete M says:

        Good luck with that when there are more than 20 people travelling…!

      • Lady London says:

        For a minute there I wondered if that’s what Border Control staff were doing when 7-8 hour delays with people queuing that long at immigration at Heathrow was reported over the weekend.

        But silly me, Border Control presumably had no access to passenger loadings predicted on incoming flights, so hadn’t provided enough staff to process passengers landing at Heathrow.

        And this without being one of the countries whose immigration officials is phoning labs to verify Covid test papers…

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