Vienna Airport offers Covid-19 tests on arrival for £165
Travellers flying into Vienna have the chance to circumvent Austria’s two-week quarantine rules with a simple Covid-19 swab test available before leaving the airport.
It will cost you €190 (£166) but if the results come back negative the period of confinement is reduced from 14 days to only the time you wait – between two and three hours.
However, these measures won’t be sustainable when travelling patterns start returning to normal, a spokesman for the airport has warned.
Under current rules put in place by Austria’s public health authorities, passengers are required to go through a body temperature test and present a medical certificate – which must be less than four days old – that confirm they have tested negative for Covid-19.
Otherwise it’s straight into a fortnight of isolation.
Those without a certificate can take a “molecular-biological” PCR test, which consists of a throat or nasal swab. A laboratory located inside the airport analyses the sample and produces results within three hours.
A negative test means the arriving visitor is free from quarantine restrictions. Passengers departing from Vienna Airport can also pay for the Covid-19 tests to use as evidence they are free from infection to visit a third country and on their return home. At present the Austrian government has banned all non-EU citizens from outside the Schengen area from entering the country.
The introduction of airport testing measures means “flights are now safer and easier”, according to the airport.
“We have heard from lots of people, especially businesses, about how these tests will help,” Peter Kleemann, a Vienna International Airport spokesperson, told Telegraph Travel.
“We want to support travellers to make things even easier. It means that if you have to fly for business you can come back and get straight into work without having to quarantine.”
“These PCR tests are very normal and very effective. But it is not something we will see everywhere and it is not permanent.”
The testing is being carried out by Austrian company Confidence DNA Analysen GmbH, which is also offering testing services across Vienna.
A spokesman for the company confirmed that they were not looking to expand this testing capacity to any other airports.
Heathrow Airport said it is not expecting to introduce a similar testing system. Instead it plans to trial “tried and tested processes and technology as well as innovations new to the airport environment”, including facial recognition thermal screening to track body temperature and UV sanitation to clean security trays.
Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “The UK has the world’s third largest aviation sector offering the platform for the Government to take a lead in agreeing a common international standard for aviation health with our main trading partners.
“This standard is key to minimising transmission of Covid-19 across borders, and the technology we are trialling at Heathrow could be part of the solution.”
