Vienna Airport in Austria is offering COVID-19 tests to passengers to allow them to skip quarantines, assuming they test negative for the virus. Starting Monday, arriving passengers can take the $209 test to potentially avoid the mandatory 14-day quarantine the country has required travelers from outside the country to endure if they don’t have a test certificate clearing of them of the virus in the previous four days. Outgoing passengers can also use the certificate to clear them at their destination. “Air travel, whether business journeys or urgent trips … will thus become safer and easier,” the airport authority said on Sunday.
Taking the test will require hanging around the airport for the two to three hours waiting for the results. The test being offered is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). It requires the uncomfortable six-inch swab to the back of the nasal passages that has become known as the “brain tickler.” Genetically engineered material including fluorescent markers are added to genetic material in the sample and if it glows, the test is positive.
