Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
However, many of the tests that are quick/cheap/readily available are antigen. For places and events that require a recent negative test, as a practical matter, antigen would make more sense even if it's less accurate. We don't have unlimited PCR testing resources.
Meanwhile, within the USA, I haven't yet noticed any testing requirements for schools, sports teams, etc. that specify PCR tests, although my impression is that sports teams would confirm positive antigen tests with PCR tests.
But it doesn't matter what makes sense. We're way past that. All that matters is that there's a dynamic that's moving away from countries accepting the antigen test. It's fact not conjecture. It also matters that things are changing in real time, while people are traveling, sometimes without warning. If you can get a sense of where things are going and anticipate what might happen, you can protect yourself.
There's a recent thread in a Gate1 travel group where a woman was transiting through CDG and the airline refused to board her for the flight to CDG because they said CDG had implemented a requirement for transit passengers for a PCR test. Note that I haven't found reference to than on the CDG website. The passenger experience right now is being dictated by a combination of fact, fiction and presumption. We can still try and plan for that and there's nothing further an airline or country can do (in terms of entry requirements), short of quarantine and outright refusal, beyond a PCR test taken within 72 hours.