Travel Insurance for Covid 19 in a country which the FCO Advises against travel?

cwaite

Can anyone tell if there is an Insurance company that would insure someone aged 60, to go to the Maldives (which is not exempt from FCO travel advice at present), for Covid 19?

I have searched the internet and found that Battleface will only insure people up to the age of 59 and other insurance companies that advertise they will insure you to go to countries
against FCO advice will not cover us for Covid 19.

Alan_Bowen

There are very few offering insurance for travelling against FCO advice but I understand the following are prepared to so: Campbell Irvine Direct Insurance, High Risk Voyager Insurance and First Allied Travel Insurance. I have seen others suggesting Staysure have begun to offer cover, but they tend to be for those with pre-existing issues and therefore expensive. I think you should be aware that the Maldives has one of the highest incidents of COVID 19 in the world when I checked on Friday afternoon their rate was 318, 50% higher than even the US and this was after only 5 weeks of being open for tourists. The current figure for the UK is 21..
                    

cwaite

Alan_Bowen said:

There are very few offering insurance for travelling against FCO advice but I understand the following are prepared to so: Campbell Irvine Direct Insurance, High Risk Voyager Insurance and First Allied Travel Insurance. I have seen others suggesting Staysure have begun to offer cover, but they tend to be for those with pre-existing issues and therefore expensive. I think you should be aware that the Maldives has one of the highest incidents of COVID 19 in the world when I checked on Friday afternoon their rate was 318, 50% higher than even the US and this was after only 5 weeks of being open for tourists. The current figure for the UK is 21..
                    

Whilst these companies offer travel insurance for travelling against FCO advice, none of them will cover us for anything Covid related.

With regards to Covid 19 in the Maldives the travel company we booked with last November are insistent that whilst flights are running and the hotel is open, we are still expected to go ahead with our holiday, or lose the large sum of money we have paid for the holiday, this is why I am keen to try and get cover.

Can you tell me where you found the rate of 318 (i.e. website) I can quote this to the travel company.

jonesMUFCforever

If you did not take out insurance when you booked - you have no chance now.
The agent is correct - IF the airlines are flying and IF the FCO do not advise against travelling - you could well lose your money.
Do you not have a packaged bank account with insurance?

silvercar

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/maldives?country=~MDV
The rate looks to be about 129 per 100,000 now. I would be careful how you interpret the rates per 100,000 for very small countries. The figures can be very volatile because the number of cases will be small. Maldives has a population of about half a million, so 630 people have been confirmed with coronavirus daily on average over the last week.

silvercar

Given that most hotels are isolated on an atoll all to themselves, the number of cases isn't really important if they are all elsewhere.

cwaite

jonesMUFCforever said:

If you did not take out insurance when you booked - you have no chance now.
The agent is correct - IF the airlines are flying and IF the FCO do not advise against travelling - you could well lose your money.
Do you not have a packaged bank account with insurance?

We did have insurance when we booked last November but this expired in April and we could not renew as no travel insurance company were selling insurance at that time. 

The FCO are advising against all but essential travel to the Maldives but the company are still insisting that we are still expected to go.

jonesMUFCforever

cwaite said:

jonesMUFCforever said:

If you did not take out insurance when you booked - you have no chance now.
The agent is correct - IF the airlines are flying and IF the FCO do not advise against travelling - you could well lose your money.
Do you not have a packaged bank account with insurance?

We did have insurance when we booked last November but this expired in April and we could not renew as no travel insurance company were selling insurance at that time. 

The FCO are advising against all but essential travel to the Maldives but the company are still insisting that we are still expected to go.

Your best hope in that case is that your flights are cancelled - then you will get that part back or if you bought a package with an ATOL certificate you should be able to claim it all back.

Alan_Bowen

If you want to frighten yourself you can see the daily rates per 100,000 population at https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases
It is updated every morning around 1030 UK time and the figures on Thursday morning  are the ones used to decide which countries to add or remove from quarantine free travel into the UK

cwaite

Had a call from the travel company today to say that our package holiday flight has been cancelled, they are looking into seeing if they can get us on another flight, does anyone know if they do find another flight am I in my rights to reject and claim a full refund.

silvercar

cwaite said:

Had a call from the travel company today to say that our package holiday flight has been cancelled, they are looking into seeing if they can get us on another flight, does anyone know if they do find another flight am I in my rights to reject and claim a full refund.

If it is a package, then one component being cancelled means the package is cancelled, but if they can find a replacement flight on the same dates I think they could substitute as your holiday then won’t have changed.
make clear to them that you had booked direct flights initially (I’m assuming) so you won’t accept a connecting flight. Also that you will accept a cancellation, it could be that they are trying hard to save your holiday for you.