corporate-wage-slave

One change that has happened this week is that until recently visitors from many countries could not go to Portugal unless their travel was essential. Canada was I think accidentally left on that list for a while, but in essence leisure travel was theoretically restricted to Europe, USA, Canada, Portugal's former colonies, Australia, New Zealand and a few places in Asia. In recent months I don't think this requirement was much enforced, but anyway the essential travel requirement has now gone.

Ixian

I am headed to Lisbon from the USA next week and am still planning on getting a naat test two days before just in case but BA (who I am flying both out of the US and on the connecting flight from London>Lisbon) stopped asking for proof of a negative test a week or so ago.

The rules are certainly in flux, and confusing, at the moment. While the visitportugal site doesn't specifically list the USA under "Accepted vaccination certificates issued by third countries under reciprocal conditions", right below that it states the rules for any certificate in the addendum, which then goes on to list the conditions for reciprocal conditions - which the CDC card (if done correctly) meets.

And of course TAP - which is the state-owned airline of Portugal - lists the CDC card as acceptable and doesn't require a negative test to be shown with it.

I'm vaxxed and will take my CDC card in addition to my negative test and see if the latter is needed. I'll post how it goes in a few days.

corporate-wage-slave

The point being that the CDC has not made reciprocal arrangements with the EU or vice versa. Reciprocity relates to the QR encoding, hash agreement and data sharing that applies to many countries, including many in the Americas, but not to the USA. And the USA has not made a similar agreement with other countries for that matter, unfortunately. The UK has no COVID travel restrictions at all, so you only come across these restrictions for the UK to Portugal leg, where most people won't be subject to controls, due to vaccination in Portugal or under the NHS.

samwise6222

Some more datapoints coming from visitportugal.com's comment sections:

Graciecatt

OMG one of us had her EUDCC expire out of nowhere for no reason. We all did them the same day and uploaded them into the German Corona-Warn app at the same time. 2 of us are perfectly fine and this one expired.

So now all she has is the US CDC card and now she'll have to test before we leave to transit Portugal. Does anyone know why this one certificate would expire randomly while the others are still valid?

corporate-wage-slave

When was the last vaccination and was it a booster (third) jab?

Graciecatt

yes it was a booster and March I think.

corporate-wage-slave

Boosters don't have an expiry at the moment. So I would just reload the QR code again in Corona Warm. There are expiry dates on the the EU DCC certificates, 1 month is typical and I have had to reload mine frequently.

Graciecatt

corporate-wage-slave she can't reload it b/c it says the link expired. how have you reloaded yours?

corporate-wage-slave

Ah, well my underlying vaccination is on the NHS app and that always regenerates every few days anyway. So I go to the Certificate Expired screen in Corona Warm, use the three dots menu on top right to delete it, then I Scan Iblue middle button) a fresh copy of the NHS QR code.

Ixian

Update: Now that I’ve come to Portugal I can confirm that there is a huge gap between what is officially posted and what is reality.

The short answer is no one cares about either vaccination records or negative tests. Not the airline (BA) at check in, not Passport control in Lisbon, no one. BA only briefly looked at my card/record because I put it on the counter and showed them. They didn’t even ask my wife. At border control in Lisbon (where the wait times are indeed long, come prepared) they asked for neither. My wife had her CDC card in her passport as a bookmark for the photo page and they handed it back to her without even looking. Didn’t even ask about the test. There were many US passport holders in the line with us and the experience was the same.

I know it’s stressful to plan because the official word is US travelers need to have a negative test and the smart move would be to plan for that still but the reality is much different.

BTW Lisbon is lovely as always!

corporate-wage-slave

Well that gives the experience of BA rather than TAP (and I think I mentioned this upthread). The border staff no longer check COVID certificates, so that bit makes sense. There are spot checks by public health officials in the area immediately after you get off the aircraft where they look at vaccination certificates, but that's detached from TAP processes in USA and Canada. There would typically be a team of a dozen people in jeans and other informal clothes, running a rope or other barrier across the area to control who gets past the checkpoint. TAP are trying to avoid getting fined, which would potentially happen if the public health officials found multiple people getting off a TAP aircraft without the right paperwork.. These checks are random - they don't check all flights and they don't check all days. In terms of what advice goes out in this thread, we have to stick to what happens to TAP passengers departing (mainly) from the Americas. And at the moment - hopefully for not much longer - you either need a European approved vaccination certificate or COVID test results.

corporate-wage-slave

The visitportugal page shows an update for 6 May 2022, but the only change was a very minor rewording relating to Madeira. Whereas the previous version said "more information..." now it says "Recommended registration at https://madeirasafe.com."

Graciecatt

Updating for anyone following my saga - my daughter found a screenshot she had taken of her EUDCC and was able to scan that and upload it into the Corona Warn app so we are all set again and we can all go through Spain's Orange Door together once we arrive after our LIS layover.

itsstacy

This post was really helpful as I was starting to stress about requirements morning of my trip. Here’s my actual experience from 5/6/22 as we did a transit through Lisbon to Spain.

At SFO, TAP staff asked for vaccination card for transit through Portugal. Mine was accepted but my husbands was not because his second shot in the series was more than 270 days ago. I got a booster back in November. Luckily that morning before we left to airport, we did the Binax now at homw
covid test with telehealth through eMed. We had 6 packs of these as I planned on taking them with me to Spain for our return to the US. On here, I confirmed that test is not officially allowed but people’s experience showed it could be accepted. Iñ our case, the airline did not question it. Im
sire they just looked at name, Bday, date of test and results. That worked to clear my husband.
They also asked for our QR code for Spain’s health questionnaire, which you can g et from putting in your vaccination card info.

at Lisbon airport, they only asked for passport and nothing related to covid.

at Sevilla they didn’t ask for anything - not even the QR code.

hopefully this helps others!