RustyC

Am in Santiago now...it's 9 hours and counting and still no word on PCR test result. I picked a bad time to arrive (Sat. morning) and SCL was flooded with pax. Took 3 hours to get all the way through. Also some pretty deep swabs from the particular nurse when the time came. Just long line after long line, mostly.

While the 72 hours for the RT-PCR test is tied to departure time for the flight to Chile, the affidavit (declaracion jurada) is not. I had positioning flights in the U.S. so the window was more like 24 hours (the first 24 of the 72) for practical purposes. The expiration on the affidavit is also in DDMMYYYY format, so it's easy to think if it shows 05/02/2022 they mean May 2, not Feb. 5. And the 72-hour window on the affidavit is tied to ARRIVAL time.

Anyway, mine was 10 hours past expiration when checked, so it had to be resubmitted on the fly. Thankfully the person was very helpful (I did my original uploading PDFs rather than attaching cellphone photos). Then on to the hourlong PCR-test line. Immigration and customs were maybe 5 minutes each.

Test still Pendiente after 9 hours and no e-mails from the mevacuno site.

On the bright side, weather is pretty good and the 4-star Hotel Fundador at $36/night near downtown looks to be way above my usual standards.

UPDATE: 13 hours from test time, negativo test result posted to my file on the Bionet site. Nothing yet from gubmint about mobility pass being activated, but that might be because of it being late Saturday night. Looks like they're being slowed by the demand.