How to get home if I test positive for Covid while traveling?

When Ken McElroy decided to go to Belize after a business trip to Miami last June, he wasn’t worried about contracting Covid-19, he said.

The real estate investment company CEO was flying privately to both places — plus, he’s vaccinated.

“I was like, there’s no way I’ll get it,” he told CNBC.

His fiancee, Danille Underwood, wasn’t as confident, said McElroy.

After 10 days in Belize, the couple took Covid tests the day before their flight back to Arizona. Though he was feeling tired and she had a cough, both were surprised when their tests came back positive.   

“Within an hour, we were out of our room,” said McElroy. “Things got pretty real at that point.”

Assisted by people in hazmat suits, the couple was quarantined in another part of the hotel, he said.

“We weren’t sure what was going to happen … if they were going to separate us or put us in a hospital,” said McElroy. “I didn’t know if I was going to need a respirator.”  

None of that happened. Within 72 hours, the couple was on a Learjet back to Arizona.

Before they left, Underwood purchased memberships with Covac Global, a medical evacuation company launched by the crisis response firm HRI in the spring of 2020. It meant the couple didn’t pay a dime for their repatriation, said McElroy.  

Commercial airlines and private jets can’t fly travelers with Covid-19 home, but certified air ambulances staffed with medical teams can.

While some companies evacuate travelers who require hospitalization, Covac Global retrieves travelers who test positive for Covid-19 and have one self-reported symptom. About 85% of evacuees are returned home, while the rest need hospital attention, said CEO Ross Thompson.

When CNBC first spoke with the company in March, it was performing about two to three medical evacuations every month. Now, that number has climbed to about 12 to 20.

“Unfortunately, business is booming,” said Thompson. “Covid was starting to be more in the rearview mirror, but then delta showed up — and it threw everybody for a loop.”

Covac Global memberships have increased 500% this year, with a 250% increase in the last month alone, he said.

So-called “breakthrough infections” caused by the highly contagious delta variant mean vaccinated people, too, can find themselves sick — or stuck — far from home. About 60% of current evacuees are vaccinated, said Thompson, because “they are the ones that feel most comfortable to travel now.”

Many countries require negative tests to return home, which is detecting mild cases of Covid-19 in travelers who didn’t know they were infected.   

“We find that between 30% to 40% of members test positive toward the end of their trip,” said Thompson. “We also see it with the unvaccinated younger children of vaccinated travelers.”

Medjet, another medical evacuation company, is reporting a record-setting summer, announcing that sales of MedjetHorizon memberships — its highest tier of coverage — were at an all-time high in July. The…