Originally Posted by
SKRan
All the flu season precautions are also good to protect you from Covid-19 and many other similar diseases. Washing hands, getting fresh air, avoid coughing people etc. We should do these things anyway, especially when travelling.
Your destinations are low risk. Unless some significant incident happens, they will be at similar risk as UK. Staying in doesn’t reduce the probability a lot, and comes with some financial loss.
Even mainland China is now categorised into risk based zones - for example Tibet is low risk because it only had 1 confirmed case and cured.
This is true. But the destination other than obvious ones, is not the main risk for most travelers at the current time.
The main risk of travel is the commingling with hundreds and hundreds of other people such as occurs at LHR Terminal 5 or 3 plus your time in the airplane itself where your risk can not be quantitated because you have no idea who you are surrounded by, nor where they have traveled to or from, including airline staff.
Since Corona virus patients can pass the virus even when they are with out symptoms, that person who just bumped into at WH Smith may have been more than just rude, he may have left some thing behind that will change your life.
That's why I am saying if travel is elective, why not put it off until the Corona virus has burnt out like the Spanish flu did, especially if you are in the higher risk groups like I am (66 y/o).
My wife and I traveled to exactly the same places that the South Korean tour group did in Israel that returned and was found to have more than 10 members with Corona virus infection after that got home in February. They missed us by just 8 weeks! We saw and passed next to many, many of these tour groups while we were in Israel, very common thing to see from all over the world, so no more elective travel for us until this is over, we dodged it once, no sense in risking it again.
All the best