300rwhp

trying to order a test for nov 16 arrival and it says in accordance with UK Gov policy your test will not be dispatched until Nov 16. Is there a policy change?

flyslow

Simply Test Me Day2 LFT test kit, £12 Amex accepted.
Ordered the test on 29th of October for 8th of November arrival. Kit was delivered on 4th of November via Royal Mail.
Same device as free NHS test, so no rocket surgery to figure out. You have to write your booking reference on the piece of paper and on the test kit and take a photo of the kit on the paper and upload it on their website.
Uploaded the result today 18:18, received the validation email 22:09. As mentioned in other posts, no certificate provided, so you can't use the test for any onward travel plans.

nomadic.relief

How does one find out whether the Day 2 PCR email results from a particular provider has suffucient data to be used as a Fit-to-fly (or more importantly, quarantine free entry to Canada) document??

I'll be arriving on Nov 25th at LCY and departing LHR on the 26th. Most convenient would be to book a Day 2 test from Collinson at LCY on arrival, but I'm not clear if that document will suffice to get me home.

capedreamer do let me know how yours ends up - won't be quite enough time for me to bail on the whole plan, but enough to get a backup plan in place!

alex67500

The test report for a Day 2 test has your name, date of birth and passport number (my last one with Collinson was end of August but I doubt it's changed). I think that should be enough.

capedreamer

I'll report back!

Interestingly enough, I asked 3 of my friends who recently visited London for short trips where this strategy theoretically could have worked, and none of them even contemplated it. I think part of this has to do with testing providers specifically marketing the Day 2 test and Fit-to-Fly test separately and with different prices. And when I called to inquire, most told me they can't advise me and one specifically said it wouldn't work.

But I'll report back after my experience.

nomadic.relief

I too was told the Day 2 would not work for travel by Collinson (which would be the LCY option), but I'm not sure that's correct ... I guess the only bit I'm hung up on is whether the email does have all the info required for Canada, in particular the second bullet:

• Traveller name and date of birth
• Name and civic address of the laboratory/clinic/facility that administered the test
• The date on which the test was conducted
• The type of test conducted
• The test result

If so, great. If not, I guess my better bet is to get a cheap Day 2 self-test mailed to the hotel and hang onto it for a future trip that may be longer? What's the general expiry of those home tests? I know I'm probably overthinking it, being denied a flight home might not even be the worst thing ...

DaveS

The home tests usually have a long expiry, One I have here shows August 2023. And yes you can keep it for a trip that keeps you here beyond day 2.

A380 9K

Hi folks,

Thank you to all of you who responded to my previous post! I have just arrived to London and hence, I thought I would share my experience with COVID testing..etc as it might help some of you.

I have reserved a test spot with Express Test in T5 at 7:50, however, I was done with immigration early so I went directly there to get tested. As a piece of advise, make sure that you get the QR code for the test ready when you go to the Express Test Centre. In my case, I had some issues connecting to the T5 Wifi but the guy at the test center was so helpful as he made me connect to the internet using his phone through Hotspot. Sample was drawn at 7:05 and test results were sent to my email at 7:37. They told me it would take an hour but in my case it only took 30 minutes.

I hope this helps some of you who are visiting London in the near future!

Kind regards,

HB7

Hi All,

I used Express Test at LHR Terminal 5 last week and thought it would be useful to share my experience for some here. I needed a PCR test done (regular PCR, not rapid PCR). I was flying to Paris that day and two days later I was flying to DXB, so only a regular PCR would do.

I turned up at Express Test with no booking, and they said I need to book online to get a test. What you may notice is that a regular PCR is not actually bookable at LHR T5 - only the rapid PCRs and lateral flow tests are bookable online. One of the guys there was really helpful, he said book the regular PCR test at ANY LHR site, and they'll do the test for me at T5.

I went ahead and did this. From the time I booked till the time I walked out with my test done was about 25 mins total. I did the test at approximately 2pm and I had my results in my email at 5 pm the next day (27 hours).

nomadic.relief

HB7 please forgive my ignorance, but why would you need to ensure only a regular PCR test? Does it show differently on the results? I can see how a rapid antigen test is different, not rapid PCR.

HB7

I think you're right in that the test is identical: the rapid test it is just processed a lot more quickly. What I don't know though is if the results/certificate is different, and on the Emirates website (I was flying EK) actually says rapid PCR tests are not allowed:

"The certificate must be a Reverse Transcription‑Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT‑PCR) test. Other test certificates including antibody tests, NHS COVID Test certificates, Rapid PCR tests and home testing kits are not accepted in Dubai".

I have no idea why that is the case, but I didn't want to take a chance that I won't be accepted onboard, so I did a regular PCR.

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

Just bought the Simply test me Day 2 Lateral flow test for my flight back from Dubai on 4th Dec.
You get 2 emails- 1 is the payment receipt then a few minutes later the test booking receipt with the code for the UK PLF.
Mobile SMS message also comes in shortly afterwards with the code
Regards

TBS

DaveS

I did the same earlier. One thing to note, you do not get a proper VAT receipt a the end of the booking process (it is VATable). It might seem a bit tight to want to recover £2 of course! Simplytestme do ask for a a lot of personal information which I am not sure is necessary. Do they really need to know your ethnicity and travel history or your NHS number? The NHS number is not mandatory, but the other entries are.

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

For the travel history , it asked for the countries that you have been in the past ten days ( maybe a relic from the Green/amber/red) so for me it was easy ( just UAE) and did not put in the NHS number ( not sure if Nationwide pathology did the same for my trip back from Berlin in September.) . Not that fussed on the ethinicity question and the price is cheap compared to the other lateral flow tess ( and the GBP 56 required for the PCR test to go to Dubai)

Regards

TBS

capedreamer

For those following, I can confirm that the Eurofins Day 2 PCR test was perfectly acceptable as a pre-departure PCR test for Canada. No issues at LHR (where it was checked by AC agents to enter the Maple Leaf Lounge, so no further checks were required at the gate) or YUL (no further checks either). I did the on-site testing at Oxford Circus. I had an appointment at 15:00 but showed up early at 13:30 as I was already in the area. There was no wait, the Eurofins staff member was very pleasant, and the whole thing took 5 minutes. Got my results within 12 hours. Downloaded the PDF from their portal. All in all, a very smooth and painless experience.

Thank you to DaveS and corporate-wage-slave for their input, and cc nomadic.relief.