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

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• Jamesay says:

  5 Mar5 March 07:14

  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:

    5 Mar5 March 07:28

    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:

      5 Mar5 March 07:35

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

  • Rich says:

    5 Mar5 March 07:42

    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:

      5 Mar5 March 09:03

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

    • tony says:

      5 Mar5 March 10:06

      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:

        5 Mar5 March 11:53

        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:

      5 Mar5 March 11:50

      Berwick is in England

• southlondonphil says:

  5 Mar5 March 07:20

  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:

    5 Mar5 March 07:37

    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:

  5 Mar5 March 07:27

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

  • mradey says:

    5 Mar5 March 07:38

    Then your insurance kicks in…..

  • George1976 says:

    5 Mar5 March 08:04

    No holiday/trip for you then obvs

    • Rob says:

      5 Mar5 March 09:04

      Er, you’re already on holiday.

      BA guarantees to let you change your flight.

      • George1976 says:

        5 Mar5 March 09:52

        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:

          5 Mar5 March 11:55

          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:

  5 Mar5 March 07:38

  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:

    5 Mar5 March 07:56

    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:

      5 Mar5 March 09:59

      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:

    5 Mar5 March 08:37

    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:

      5 Mar5 March 08:57

      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:

      5 Mar5 March 09:16

      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:

        5 Mar5 March 10:44

        150 hours…

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

    • Peter Taysum says:

      6 Mar6 March 11:55

      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:

    5 Mar5 March 13:00

    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:

  5 Mar5 March 07:49

  How do you actually “swab”?!

  • Ken says:

    5 Mar5 March 08:01

    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:

      5 Mar5 March 08:04

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

  • Tracey says:

    5 Mar5 March 08:08

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

    • Rob says:

      5 Mar5 March 09:03

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

      • AJA says:

        5 Mar5 March 09:45

        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:

      5 Mar5 March 13:35

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

  • Alex Sm says:

    5 Mar5 March 12:24

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

• Jenny W says:

  5 Mar5 March 08:11

  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:

    5 Mar5 March 10:37

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

• roberto says:

  5 Mar5 March 08:13

  @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:

    5 Mar5 March 08:21

    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:

  5 Mar5 March 08:15

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

  • meta says:

    5 Mar5 March 08:24

    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:

      5 Mar5 March 08:29

      And your birth country is ?

    • Pete M says:

      5 Mar5 March 11:26

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

    • Lady London says:

      5 Mar5 March 13:44

      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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