When the pandemic hit in March 2020 most of the world closed its borders we saw a drastically changing world. Just a few days ago we could travel almost everywhere in the world with just a passport and, in some cases, we might have needed a visa but other than that we were good to go. From one day to another the borders of the world were sealed shut completely leaving millions of people stranded in places they did not call home. Eventually, more and more countries started to open up in a limited way, but with a whole set of new rules that travelers had to adhere to.

Initially, the most common restriction was some sort of quarantine, ranging from enforced or non-enforced home quarantine for a few days to military guarded hotel quarantine for up to a month. Later on, when tests became more widely available it became common to require a negative test result before entering a country. That test had to be done within a certain time frame that usually ranged from 2-3 days (48 - 72 hours) but in some limited cases could stretch up to 4 days (96 hours). When the much quicker and cheaper antigen tests came on the market towards the end of 2020 they were accepted by some, but not a majority, of countries for a more limited time frame, usually no more than 1-2 days before arrival (24 - 48 hours).

There were however some countries that introduced restrictions that went outside of that norm. As I work in aviation I had to learn a lot about these new requirements and did see some weird things. In this blog post, I will go through some of the weirder restrictions that we saw from around the world and try to make sense of them. Most of them actually had logical reasoning behind them, but some of them are inexplicable. I have not attempted to make a ranking of what's weirdest, it's just a list of some weird restrictions without mutual comparison between them.

United States

The Covid-19 related entry restrictions for the United States are quite normal and like most other countries, except for one little detail. They put in a ban on people who in the last 14 days had been in the Schengen Area plus a few more selected countries such as the United Kingdom, Brazil, India, and China. They didn't ban citizens from those countries to enter, they just banned most people who are not a citizen or resident of the United States who has been in, including a transfer, to enter. This meant that someone from Germany could go to for example Mexico for two weeks and then enter the United States as normal. But that same person couldn't enter directly from Germany. This became quite weird with time as most of Europe for most of the time had a much better situation than many of the countries that didn't get banned. That person from Germany would statistically be much safer entering from Germany than Mexico. This became especially true after vaccinations made much of Europe immunized.

The United States also didn't suspend the ESTA Visa Waiver program, which meant that people from the Schengen Area could apply for permission to fly to the United States and also get it approved. But then still be stopped at the airport because that permission wasn't valid when traveling from Europe. Another thing that many American citizens missed when they've been over to Europe, or elsewhere, is that the United States doesn't accept a vaccination certificate for entry. Even vaccinated Americans need to have a negative test result to enter the United States.

New York City

Seamen

There's actually one group of people who were exempted from almost all entry restrictions in almost all countries during the whole pandemic, including the initial phase when borders were shut closed completely. That group is merchant seamen. So if you just said you were a seaman you could travel anywhere... No. They had to show their seaman book and work order that they had a ship waiting for them in a port in the destination country. But that is documents that seamen always have with them when they travel long before Covid-19.

Seamen can of course transmit the disease as easily as anyone else, but the logic behind letting them enter is quite easy to understand. If seamen were not allowed to travel we would disrupt the global supply chains and create an even bigger problem than covid in the form of food shortages, and shortages of basically everything else that we need to survive.

Netherlands

Most countries had some sort of requirement of a negative PCR test or a negative Antigen test. The Netherlands took it one step further and during the winter of 2020/2021 introduced the requirement that you needed both a negative PCR test and a negative Antigen test. And the Antigen test was not allowed to be older than four hours. This requirement also applied even if you only did a transfer in the country. And if that wasn't enough, when they first implemented this requirement they announced it late in the evening and said that it would start at midnight the same day.

Denmark

This is probably my favorite of them all. And there is a logic behind it, but it's still very illogical. In the summer of 2020 when Europe opened up after the first wave, Denmark for a few months had a rule that other European visitors were only allowed to enter the country if they could show bookings for accommodation for a total stay of at least six nights.

There was a reasoning behind the restriction. They didn't want short-term visitors, people going on weekend trips, to visit. They wanted to welcome tourists, but they only wanted those tourists who would stay for some time, I'm guessing mainly German campers. The restriction wasn't there for very long though, and it was very easy to circumvent if you wanted to as the wording of the rule didn't say anything about actually staying for six nights. You could just split up your bookings in two and then cancel the days you didn't want after passing through the border. You would still comply with their entry restriction as you had a booking for six nights when you entered the country, which was all that they asked for.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Congo, Zambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (Among Others)

While the standard time frame that a PCR test is allowed to be valid usually range from 2-3 days (48 - 72 hours) there were some countries in mainly Africa which did have a PCR test requirement but where the time frame was as long as a week (168 hours). I can't find the logic behind this as even 72 hours is a long time during which you could easily get infected. A PCR test is just a snapshot in time and it doesn't say anything about your status today if you were negative a week ago.

Mexico

Some countries changed their restrictions more often than most people will change their underwear (looking at you, Norway...), and some countries implemented a few restrictions early and rarely or never changed them at all. Mexico is however the only country in the world that never had any entry restrictions at all. After the initial lockdown in March 2020, there were a few countries that opened up and at times removed all their restrictions, but all countries except for Mexico at some point had some requirement of a negative test, quarantine, or an outright ban on all foreign citizens.

QR Codes That Doesn't Work

When borders started to open again after the initial global lockdown a new type of documentation started to become the norm for entry into many countries. A declaration where you had to fill in your current health status, either as a self-reported sworn declaration of honor or as a more robust declaration where you had to upload certain health documents such as negative test results. Many of these also asked for contact information, such as where you would stay during your stay in the country and where you've been in the last 14 days. There was just one problem with all these forms. They often didn't work. It was important to create the forms and make them mandatory for entry. It was not as important to make sure that the infrastructure would work.

Another problem with the declarations was that few people actually knew that they had to do them. That is no excuse though and only shows that despite a global pandemic with severely restricted movement across the world people still didn't investigate what was needed for their destination. Or they did and thought that it wasn't mandatory. Always make sure you have everything that is listed as a requirement when you travel. Unless explicitly stated it is not voluntarily, it is mandatory.

Estonia

In the periods of lower transmission rates in Europe most countries within the European Union have kept a threshold of how high the incidence can be in the origin country of a traveler to allow entry without a testing requirement or quarantine. During the summer travel season of 2021, Estonia had that limit at 150 cases per 100.000 people over the last 14 days. If your country were below that threshold anyone from your country could enter as normal. Why is this notable?

During the summer of 2020, the most common practice was to allow entry from countries with an incidence of 20 and below. Granted that testing was not as widely available at that point it's still very low compared to 150 a year later. Due to the higher availability of testing and therefore a naturally higher incidence when more mild infections were caught the threshold was raised to between 50-75 for most countries in 2021. Estonia put their limit more than 100% higher than the rest of Europe, possibly to encourage travel. At first, it seemed like an unnecessarily high threshold, but by late July most countries in Europe hadn't not only rushed through the lower limit of 50 cases per 100.000 over the last 14 days, most of them went way above the Estonian limit. It's important to note though that this limit only applied to unvaccinated people in almost all cases, but for large parts of the summer season, people below the age of forty couldn’t be fully vaccinated due to shortages and priorities.

If you want to see the current rates and the guidelines that the European countries used to determine the incidence there are two websites you can visit. There's the Latest Situation Update from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which lists the current incidence and raw numbers. The same official agency also has a map of Europe with color-coding based on several parameters such as incidence, positivity rate, and test frequency that together form a risk level.

Tallinn, Estonia

Vaccinations

When the vaccinations came in late 2020 it changed the playing field for everyone and thanks to that we are now on our way to opening up the world again. However, for traveling purposes, they are not as useful as one would think. For travel to and within Europe, it generally works with a certificate of two doses, with the second dose at least 14 days before arrival. But for travel to most of the world, you still need to take a PCR or Antigen test, with some countries requiring both that you're vaccinated and take a test. Canada and Iceland for example require both that you're vaccinated, and then still take a test as of September 2021. The United Kingdom will let you skip two out of three mandatory tests if you're vaccinated starting in October 2021, but you still need to take at least one test. Singapore, when they open up in late-2021, will require all incoming passengers to be vaccinated, and take up to four tests over a period of eight days.

Loose Border Checks - Strict Airline Checks

How strictly does the border control in your destination country check these documents and additional requirements for Covid-19? In many cases, not very strict at all. However, the airlines do check them strictly and will deny boarding. So in many cases, someone could be denied boarding and have to rebook for a later flight due to incomplete documentation of health declarations and PCR-tests only to arrive a day later to their destination and find out that no one cared to look at it. This is due to that the countries have more or less outsourced the controls of this to the airlines. They trust that the airlines do check it, and then they do spot checks to make sure they don't forget or become negligent or loose in interpreting the rules.