Have to travel during pandemic? Be prepared to protect both yourself and your loved ones!

It’s THAT time of the year again, but are you really ready for the holiday season during pandemic?

As we all can see, COVID-19 has changed our day-to-day life in numerous ways. People are practicing social distancing, wearing masks, hanging out with friends on Zoom, or even waking up one minute before work meetings (we’ve all been there ;)). However, as an individual, I have already seen the “pandemic-fatigue” among communities.

When we first heard about COVID-19 on news, everyone was scared, worried, cautious, checking updates every day and stocking PPE as much as we could to protect ourselves and families. However, since SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating around for almost 9 months, people don’t feel overwhelmed or vigilant anymore. Instead, we are getting too “comfortable” under this serious situation, which is not helpful for either ourselves or the public health. For example, you can easily observe someone or even a group of people dining in without masks on, which is actually the easiest way to contract COVID-19. Personally, I totally understand that a lot of us are tired of staying at home without any social events or actual contact with a human being, but now it’s not the time to put our guard down, otherwise, all of us will have to fight against the virus for a much longer time.

This year’s holiday season is going to be a huge challenge for all of us in the country, or even globally. What’s worse is that the flu season is on its way as well, meaning we will have to deal with COVID-19 AND flu at the same time (Friendly reminder: please get your flu vaccine if you haven’t 🙂). Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve are meant to let families and friends reunite after a year-long separation due to work or study, but it looks like more than half of us are planning to celebrate this holiday season with their loved ones via Zoom or other platform, which can be emotionally difficult. Certainly, staying at home is the best way to prevent yourself from getting infected, but what if you have to travel?? I have seen many people are asking whether it is safe to travel again as the holidays are coming. The answer is, it can’t be as safe as you staying at home, but if you HAVE TO, do it right! I recently air traveled from East coast to the midwest, so I want to share some of my tips about how to travel safely during the pandemic. Hope these are helpful!

First things first

Let’s forget about your usual cool travel kits for a minute! During the pandemic, nothing is more important than the new-normal travel kit:

I put alcohol wipes, hand sanitizers, N95 (if you have one) and goggles in my bag. I went to several stores looking for hand sanitizers, but a lot of them mark 62% ethanol on bottles, which are not what we want. Please make sure the concentration of ethanol to be somewhere between 70-75% for it to kill pathogens effectively. I bought high concentration ethanol on Amazon and dilute it to 75% and refill my spray bottles, which works well.

1. Before you leave

Here’s another tip to keep in mind. When you come back home after traveling, you would want to decontaminate your clothes, hair, shoes and hands with ethanol. I usually put my ethanol spray at the door, so when I come back, I don’t have to contaminate my whole apartment to get the alcohol spray! For clothes washing, I use disinfectant laundry detergent from Lysol. You can find it on Amazon.

2. Ready to get to airport

Mask on, goggles on, hand sanitizers in your pocket. I would recommend to drive private car to the airport, but if this option is not available for you, you can also call Uber or Lyft. Remember to open the windows to let the air circulating better inside the car. After arriving at the airport, I would spray ethanol all over my hands and upper body.

3. Pass through security check

Since we have masks on, the airport staff might ask you to take off your mask for a second for identity verification. Before you take off your mask, I’d recommend to clean your hands with hand sanitizers first.

4. Waiting to take off

Security check can be the most crowded section throughout the trip, so after exposing your electronics to the world, please wipe them before putting them into your bag! Yay! The hardest part is over :). At this time, I would also spray alcohol all over my hands and upper body and find somewhere much less crowded to relax a bit!

5. After boarding

After we get onto the plane, take out your wipes and clean the seat, armrest and the table. Here comes the most important part: turn on the air vent nozzles over your head for better air circulation throughout the flight! The air inside air planes gets changed every several minutes and the air will be filtered before flowing into the cabin, which might be safer, but we still need to be vigilant and careful by not touching your face, eating or drinking.

6. Arrival

Finally we arrive! But it’s still not the time to relax! Wipe your luggage thoroughly and again, yes, spray spray spray! Once you get to your parent’s or friends’ house, spray your shoes and coats and leave them outside for several days. Then, wash your hands for 20s, take off your mask and discard it in a small bag after spraying. It’s not over yet! Wash your clothes with Lysol laundry detergent and dry them under high temperature. At the same time, take a shower and wash your face 🙂

Now you can enjoy the “together” time! It’s always recommended to quarantine yourself for 14 days and monitor symptoms.

Hope you guys find these tips helpful! Everyone can be a superhero to protect their loved ones by taking precautions during this hard time 🙂

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