Unvaccinated adult with covid 4 April 2022 at 2:24PM in Coronavirus travel help & info 27 replies 1.2K views

ciskclar

Hi

My son (19) is unvaccinated and now has covid. We've a trip booked to Spain in July and reading up he should be eligible to travel having recovered within 180 days. He's had a positive lateral flow test so far. Is this sufficient in order to obtain a C19 recovery certificate? Or do we need to buy a PCR and pay for a recovery test cert also?

Cheers

Caz3121

info here https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/spain/entry-requirements#if-youve-had-covid-19-in-the-past-year
as far as I am aware he will not get a NHS recovery certificate unless he goes and takes a PCR
(system would be open to abuse for cases like travel to Spain where non-vaccinated cannot travel for tourism but have an exception for those that have recovered...given that anyone can report an unsupervised lateral flow test you would need confirmed evidence that there was a positive result to recover from) I expect even if you went down the private letter route they would expect some sort of evidence more than a home test.

jon81uk

Will need a PCR to get a recovery certificate. Can't get tested on the NHS anymore, that ended last week.
So will need to do it all privately.

Probably easier for them to get vaccinated, but they will have to do it as soon as can once recovered from current infection (need to wait four weeks) as there might not be enough time now before July.
Four weeks is early May, first dose, then 8 weeks later second dose is early July and then need two weeks before allowed to travel.
So actually probaly not possible for him to get vaccinated in time now.

onashoestring

To get a recovery certificate for international travel ( which as others have said is not available from NHS ) it’s something you have to arrange yourself and pay for - 
It would be best to choose your provider and then check what they require as evidence- all will require a certified positive result which includes his name and date of birth and the date of the test - the provider you choose may have additional requirements in order to issue the certificate.

silvercar

By July the Spanish entry rules could change.

But you’ve raised an important issue. Obviously the priority of the British government isn’t facilitating individuals’ requirement to comply with the rules of foreign countries, but there is now a gap in that an NHS recovery certificate is only available after an NHS PCR is registered. Now that, in England at least, NHS PCRs are only available to the vulnerable, it is going to be difficult for people to comply. 

The easiest solution is to a) arrange a private certified PCR while you have covid. Wait and see what the rules are nearer to travel and if you need a certificate of recovery obtain one privately from the fleet of online websites offering this. It means paying for the test and paying for the recovery certificate. By the time you travel you may find LFTs are accepted, which are less likely to still be positive.

The short term solution is to ask around if anyone has a spare NHS PCR. Some were sent out with boxes of LFTs recently, asking people to complete them for research purposes. Others may have been ordered by people who subsequently decided not to test. They can be used by anyone, when registering the test you won’t have the email code that they were sent with, but instead you can choose to register by logging in to your NHS account. I suspect the number of spare tests will reduce in the coming days, along with the testing capacity.

jon81uk

silvercar said:

The easiest solution is to a) arrange a private certified PCR while you have covid. Wait and see what the rules are nearer to travel and if you need a certificate of recovery obtain one privately from the fleet of online websites offering this. It means paying for the test and paying for the recovery certificate. By the time you travel you may find LFTs are accepted, which are less likely to still be positive.

The NHS is still providing free vaccination though, so that would be an even easier solution.

It is also very likely the rules may change and it is possible the rules may be that all people need to be vaccinated, or non-vaccinated need tests or many other different things.

ciskclar

Thank you for all the responses, much appreciated.
I have contacted one of the companies offering recovery certificates, here's the response...

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You can apply for a recovery certificate after 11 days of your positive test.

We accept the NHS notification email, text message or app notification that shows your name, date of birth, and test date.  You can take a picture of the screen showing the notification or you can take a screenshot of the message and submit it with your order.
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So i'm guessing a LFT result will suffice, crazy really!

bridgetmay

I am in the same situation, I have covid atm (only have first two vaccinations and wasnt planning on getting the booster) and hoping to travel to Majorca in May. I only have proof of a positive LFT and was wondering if they would need evidence of a positive PCR, which would now have to pay for and then pay for a recovery cert. Lots of mixed info online.

ZaSa1418

ciskclar said:

Thank you for all the responses, much appreciated.
I have contacted one of the companies offering recovery certificates, here's the response...

-----

You can apply for a recovery certificate after 11 days of your positive test.

We accept the NHS notification email, text message or app notification that shows your name, date of birth, and test date.  You can take a picture of the screen showing the notification or you can take a screenshot of the message and submit it with your order.
-----

So i'm guessing a LFT result will suffice, crazy really!

Good luck, let us know how you get on with it all. 
There is so much info online it will be nice to see a recent experience with it. 

onashoestring

OP - What does the NHS text message show ? 

silvercar

You need to check what the country you want to visit will accept in terms of a recovery certificate. Spain may well be lax, but there are countries that require proof tested by PCR. The recovery certificate will say what proof was used.