It’s that time of year. My employer has sent out the forms for us lowly underlings to complete and return. The annual leave requests form. We must pick a week in spring, two in summer, one in autumn. It’s normally a somewhat exciting task that involves plannings holidays to exotic locations. I’d be checking seasonal weather charts, flight costs and guide books. Not so this time. For 2021, I’m checking infection rates, quarantine regulations, population density, flight distances and the likelihood of a vaccine arriving.
Annoyingly, all the study in the world can be turned into a pointless exercise within days of an outbreak being recorded. It’s tough to predict what options one might have for travel next week. The chart above is less than a week old, but will be out of date tomorrow, with Sweden, Poland and Greece all candidates for removal from the quarantine exemption list.
We have flights and a hotel booked for Malta in the middle of October. Malta was removed from the exemption list sometime ago and looked thoroughly unlikely to happen. But now I find that the coronavirus is teasing us. Rates have halved in just a week. I will continue to monitor the situation. The rate must fall below 20 cases per 100,000 people within another week. It’s possible.
I can’t be sure where we will be able to go next year, if anywhere at all. I have a number of candidates. Uzbekistan is at the top of the list. Ukraine too, for a shorter break closer to home. Mexico would be nice, of course. South Africa is a possibility. The one holiday I can pretty much discard today is one aboard a cruise ship. But if all else fails, I can catch a ride on one of the tour boats leaving Bournemouth pier for a trip around a selection of cruise ships. It’s better than nothing, I guess.
The Mexile 
I see Sicily is on that list. I have a nice road map of Sicily that I get out now and then just for dreaming about visiting some remote backcountry. There are a lot of dead end roads in Sicily. Maybe later…
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Italy have also now moved into the red zone. They may also be added to the quarantine list tonight. But they might survive another week given their rise has been very slow, controlled and their rate is so much better than here in the U.K.
There are just three countries in the green zone now. Cyprus (who require a recent negative test before arrival), Turkey (prices are soaring…) and Singapore. The chap that compiles the guy is…
https://twitter.com/ppaulcharles?s=21
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The first Covid case in my group was a guy who had been to southern Italy in February. Ed was working on a restaurant rebuild, down in the foot part, for a wealthy friend who lives in Youngstown. He was doing well until he flipped his car on icy Ohio roads while going to see his doctor… The Covid about did him in , in his broken down state. Most of my areas early cases were imported from New York and Italy. Most of our current infections are university kids.
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Bournemouth and the south west in general have fared reasonably well and been spared the worst of it. But this is a uni town, so the fear is that the return of the students will see a spike. The first outbreak was announced yesterday. I’ll keep clear of places frequented by youngsters, methinks.
Italy and Sweden survived the weekly quarantine announcement. Greece too. Poland did not. And nor did Turkey, which caught most people by surprise. But it turns out the Turks were fiddling their figures.
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Well done! The stats are there to accompany the cruse ship with an excellent commentary. Our trip would to Zihuatanejo on the coast of Mexico were it not for the pandemic and medical complications.Happy travelling.
Rich
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