it seems as if almost every government and airline, every trade association and especially every traveler is in agreement: There needs to be some form of readily-accepted and hard-to-fake Covid status document.
But as the weeks continue, the goal seems farther and farther away, with impatient countries making unilateral moves, anxious airlines trying out schemes of their own, and no one calling everyone to the table to work it out.
In the past week, the EU moved more definitively toward a by-the-summer issuance of an all-EU document that would be available digitally as well as on paper—but Austria announced that it will go ahead with its own version by next month; Greece, Cyprus and Israel have created a bubble of their own; Australia and Singapore have announced they'll have, no date set yet, a mutual travel corridor between them, and Delta has announced it will run no-quarantine flights from the U.S. to Italy, even though technically Italy has not yet said OK to U.S. travelers.
And that's only some of the moves. Add in the UK taking Portugal off its 'red list' and Portugal anxious not to wait for the EU to act... Other countries, notably Iceland and some Caribbean countries are opening doors with rules of their own.
While all of this might seem only theoretical until travel shows greater signs of revival, it may well be the other way around: As long as there is no readily recognized and verifiable way of ensuring that a passenger is immune or has very recently tested negative, there will continue to be vast barriers of both confidence and regulation holding back travel.
Gumbo is only a small voice, but Gumbo calls on all parties to sit down now and work it out. It's time, and they can, they must do it.
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