Rapid test taken Urgent Care Facility

[scooter6251]

22 hours ago, not-enough-cruising said:

You can trust the CDC list of acceptable tests that Royal has linked to from their FAQ page. 

I personally wouldn't trust anything from the CDC.  Tomorrow their answer would likely change.

[not-enough-cruising]

38 minutes ago, scooter6251 said:

I personally wouldn't trust anything from the CDC.  Tomorrow their answer would likely change.

Doesn’t matter, as long as RCG is using this list, that’s what you go by. 

[GTO-Girl]

On 8/10/2021 at 10:28 PM, TACMS said:

I know CVS, Walgreens and certain labs can be used for testing prior to sailing.  IS an Antigen Rapid test from an urgent care provider acceptable for sailing?  (Within 3 days prior to sailing)   Thanks in advance….

we are currently on the Mariner for the 2 day test cruise and I can confirm we got the rapid antigen test at our local Urgent Care and it was acceptable.

[dswallow]

6 hours ago, ryano said:

 

Does he even know?   He posted on Facebook himself that testing on Tuesday is good for a Friday cruise. Thursday for a Sunday departure etc  but two different CSRs at Royal are saying it has to be taken Wednesday, Thursday or Friday for a Friday sailing 🙄    they need to stop playing with peoples emotions and just test at the port if they are gonna require one.  Im so over all this.   

 

One thing I've noticed is people throughout this whole mess are incapable of actually reading things themselves anymore. So instead they call over and over and over again asking the same question of people who really are not normally involved in that layer of boarding requirement information, and then complain about getting conflicting answers.

This is what is in the FAQ regarding testing, and while that does keep changing pretty often, the actual method of calculating days has been there in one way or another in this form for long enough.


 

Now, reading that, should it be difficult for someone to figure out when they need to get tested for their Friday departure, or for a Sunday departure, or any other day? It's really very simple. But instead, they call and ask someone, and someone gives out incorrect info. So they're now panicking about it, call again, get a different, maybe even a correct one, but now they've gotten two answers. So then they ask online, and people who haven't looked in two months answer based on old information like the 5-day requirement. Or they answer thinking St. Maarten knows how to count days, when they clearly do not, and then give a day of the week that's only 4 days before the needed travel date.

And sure, certainly it starts off with poor messaging from Royal Caribbean. But when they fix it, now people don't believe it. Lose, lose.

Funny thing is the rest of the FAQ has just changed again, and there's incorrect info, or at least another layer of confusion, there now, so I'm gonna go send an email about it off to the person who can fix it properly and hope they do it quickly. 🙂

 

Where Do I Take A RT-PCR Test And Submit The Results Before Cruising? | Royal Caribbean Cruises
  

But, hey, at least it now actually calls out ID NOW which of late does seem to be a common question I see people asking. Even though it's been listed indirectly for a short while now, via rewording the requirement as "Antigen or NAAT" instead of "Antigen or PCR", and linking to the complete list of FDA-approved molecular tests, all of which are acceptable, including ID NOW.


 

[AustinCruise]

Watch out for urgent care Covid test costs. Some are fair, but our local one will charge the test fee PLUS an emergency room fee.  Seams they have upped their status from urgent care to free standing ER.

 

just a heads up. 

[GTO-Girl]

20 minutes ago, AustinCruise said:

Watch out for urgent care Covid test costs. Some are fair, but our local one will charge the test fee PLUS an emergency room fee.  Seams they have upped their status from urgent care to free standing ER.

 

just a heads up. 

It cost us zero!  We stated we had Medicare, didn’t even give them our supplement insurance information and we paid nothing.

[TACMS]

Thank you for all the answers/suggestions.  We are scheduled for the PCR test on Tuesday for our Friday cruise (I have no doubt that is acceptable - test and timing🥰).  My concern is that “what if” our test results don’t come back in time for the cruise😳. Yes they say 2-3 days, but…. 1) I’m a worrier. 2) there are many covid tests being done right now (can labs handle them all in a 2/3 day turn around?).  
 

Anyway…I found an urgent care that will do “same day” covid PCR test. At first I was looking to schedule a rapid antigen test as a back up to our Tuesday PCR test.  Very hard to find one now.  Did find one at an urgent care (my cost), but then was concerned that the rapid one could be ‘false positive’ (yes I’m the worrier🙈). So I scheduled the same day PCR test for later on Thursday and can cancel if don’t need.  Here’s hoping my original PCR test at CVS comes back (and my daughters too).

[jamon]

thanks for the info

[dswallow]

23 hours ago, TACMS said:

Thank you for all the answers/suggestions.  We are scheduled for the PCR test on Tuesday for our Friday cruise (I have no doubt that is acceptable - test and timing🥰).  My concern is that “what if” our test results don’t come back in time for the cruise😳. Yes they say 2-3 days, but…. 1) I’m a worrier. 2) there are many covid tests being done right now (can labs handle them all in a 2/3 day turn around?).  
 

Anyway…I found an urgent care that will do “same day” covid PCR test. At first I was looking to schedule a rapid antigen test as a back up to our Tuesday PCR test.  Very hard to find one now.  Did find one at an urgent care (my cost), but then was concerned that the rapid one could be ‘false positive’ (yes I’m the worrier🙈). So I scheduled the same day PCR test for later on Thursday and can cancel if don’t need.  Here’s hoping my original PCR test at CVS comes back (and my daughters too).

 

Generally an Antigen test has a higher chance of a false negative than a PCR or other NAAT test, which is why generally for travel the more desirable test, from the point of view of the destination, is a PCR or other NAAT test.

Most tests give you a summary of their sensitivity and specificity based on the trials they ran to get them accepted by the FDA.

Sensitivity is how well the test did to identify the presence of COVID.

Specificity is how well the test did to identify there was no presence of COVID.

From AMS :: Feature Column :: Does He Have It? : Sensitivity, Specificity, and COVID-19 Testing
 

Sensitivity characterizes how a test deals with people who are infected. It is the percentage of those who test as infected when that they are in fact infected. A test with high sensitivity will catch almost every infected person, and will hence allow few of those infected to escape detection. This is the most important criterion. For example, it was reported recently that Spanish health authorities returned thousands of tests to one firm after finding that its tests had sensitivity equal to 30%. This means that 70% of infected people would not be diagnosed correctly by this test.
 

Specificity characterizes how a test deals with people who are not infected. It is the percentage of those who will test as uninfected when they are in fact uninfected. A test with high specificity will hence report a small number of false positives.

 

 

Normally there'd be a diagnostic test and then, based on those results, possibly a confirmatory one. This would be based on whether or not the patent was showing symptoms.

Someone WITH symptoms would be given a Rapid Antigen test. If they tested negative, they would then be given a PCR or other NAAT test to confirm the Antigen test was not a false negative.

Someone WITHOUT symptoms who took a Rapid Antigen test and if they tested positive, they would then be given a PCR or other NAAT test to confirm the Antigen test was not a false positive.

The reasoning is that the Rapid Antigen test is cheap and fast. A PCR or other NAAT test is usually a lot more costly and can require processing by a remote lab and require 24 hours or even longer, plus the need of transporting the sample to that lab. So you use the Antigen test to diagnose if it is appropriate to do the more accurate PCR or other NAAT test.


Translating this to people using this testing for travel, an Antigen test is the preferable one if you are NOT showing symptoms because it is more likely to give false negatives than a false positive. False positives are intrusive to the vacation. 🙂

[DISFANS3]

I talked to the clueless lady yesterday, fun times on the phone...