*** The information below was accurate as of our trip from April 8-18, 2022. For the most up-to-date travel requirements, please check the US Embassy’s website.
In the age of Covid-19, international travel is anything but simple. Every country has different rules and requirements, and they are constantly changing.
When I first started researching our Portugal trip, proof of vaccination or a negative test within 48 hours was required to eat inside restaurants and to stay in hotels. While our entire family is vaccinated, this requirement was still tricky because Portugal does not recognize US vaccination cards, which means we would be subject to testing every 48 hours. While some people reported that many restaurants “unofficially” accepted the CDC cards, it seemed risky to have to face being turned away at every meal and untenable to be testing every other day. I watched anxiously to see if this requirement would be lifted before our trip.
Thankfully, as cases dropped across Europe, Portugal dropped this requirement. By the time of our trip, the main restrictions were masks indoors and on public transportation, and the pre-requisites for travel to Portugal were only filling out a passenger locator form and providing a negative covid test. Note that Portugal does accept EU vaccination in lieu of a negative test but still does not accept US vaccination due to reciprocity issues (ie the US does not recognize EU proof of vaccination and still requires their citizens to provide a negative test result to enter, so Portugal requires the same of US citizens).
The passenger locator form was easy to fill out and could be completed up to 4 days in advance of your trip. It simply asked for your personal information, flight information, and hotel information. We printed out copies of ours but it could also have been uploaded to the VeriFLY App if your airline uses that.
The testing requirement is a negative PCR within 72 hours of flying or a negative antigen test within 24 hours. The timing is based on the departure time of your first flight so if you have a connection, the only relevant time is the departure time of your first flight (assuming your flights were all booked on a single ticket).
Note that the VeriFLY app has a limitation where it only allows you to enter the international leg of your flight so it calculates the test timing off of that. This was a problem for us because our flight from Charlotte left at 6pm but connected through Philadelphia on a 9pm flight to Lisbon. The latest we could get tested the day before was 7:45 pm so although the tests were valid per the official rules, VeriFLY would not accept them to be uploaded in the app because they only recognized the 9pm flight. This caused a huge amount of last minute second-guessing over the validity of our tests and added time and stress to have to show our test results at multiple points throughout the journey instead of just showing that we were pre-approved on the app.
Because we couldn’t use VeriFLY, we were subject to a second screening before boarding the plane in Philadelphia. They reviewed our locator forms and test results again at the gate. (They had also done so in Charlotte when we checked in.) The regulations are very clear that US vaccination is not accepted for entry into Portugal, but the agent who checked our paperwork asked for proof of vaccination OR negative test results. Interestingly the agent right next to her turned down people’s vaccination cards and said she needed to see their negative test results. I think the inconsistency stems from the fact that agents work multiple international flights a day and each country has different entry requirements. Agents either may not know the requirements of the country they are currently checking in or they may not care as long as one form of covid-related documentation is provided.
Note that nothing was checked upon arrival in Lisbon. Going through passport control, they only looked at our passports and did not ask for the passenger locator form or proof of vaccination/negative test.
The US still requires a negative test to return to the country, regardless of vaccination status. We pre-purchased the Abbott eMed tests and brought them with us. There are pluses and minuses to using these proctored home tests. On the negative side, they only sell them in packs of 6 for $150 (although they are eligible for insurance reimbursement) so although they recommend having backup tests in case something goes wrong, most people won’t end up using all 6. In addition, the boxes are ridiculously large for the size of the test inside and they were a pain to cart around the entire trip. On the positive side, it was nice to know that we could test from the comfort of our own hotel at any time of day or night without an appointment. (We had to have our tests on Easter Sunday and were worried about finding open pharmacies to test us.) It is also a more pleasant experience to test yourself than to have someone else stick the swab up into your brain.
The eMed test was relatively easy but it was time consuming. There is a three-step process that has to be started and completed separately for each person in your group. (Adults can perform the tests simultaneously if they have separate devices and eMed accounts, but because children are registered under a parent’s account, they cannot be tested at the same time as the parent or each other.) You login and join the queue – although we all tested back to back, the wait time varied from 5 minutes to 20 minutes for each of us. Once someone is available, they watch you perform the test over video and then start a 15 minute timer. When the timer goes off, a different person comes online to review the test results with you. Your results are emailed to you within 5 minutes.
End to end the process took between 20-40 minutes per person so for a family of 4, you need to allot 1-2 hours for the entire process. I will say that my test initially appeared to have a glitch, as the liquid never went up the stick and the control line didn’t appear. You aren’t supposed to touch the test but after it became obvious that it wasn’t working, we wiggled the swab around again and it started to work. I was glad not have to retest, as that would have taken another 20+ minutes.
The US testing requirement is not a strict number of hours but simply the day before. We flew out on a Monday morning so a test taken anytime on Sunday was acceptable. This time we were able to upload the results to VeriFLY and that sped up the process at check-in.
All in all, the Covid requirements for our trip to Portugal were not very difficult but they did add an element of stress to the trip that was not there in pre-pandemic days. First we were worried about testing positive before the trip and having to cancel at the last minute. Then I will admit that I lay in bed every night wondering if any of us would test positive and get stuck in Portugal. We fully realized and accepted the risks before travel, but it definitely adds a level of stress that hangs over you the entire trip. I was actually more concerned about contracting covid on this trip than I was on our trip to the Galapagos last year, even though the kids were fully vaccinated for this trip. But the omicron variant is definitely spreading more easily, even amongst fully vaccinated people. And the nature of this trip – being in cities around a lot of people, visiting crowded tourist attractions, and taking various forms of public transportation – made it higher risk. While this trip was completely amazing, I think I will hold off on another city-based trip until after the test to return requirement is lifted. We can happily take more outdoor-focused trips until then!
