The COVID Glitch

 The COVID Glitch   —   October 6, 2021                

   The health tracking nightmare, at times feels overwhelming. Health Ministers in  almost every country wants to know your life story and family history, probably under the guise of tracking your movements in and out of their country.  You know…the big brother thing.  They want to know every detail from our family secrets to our airplane seat numbers.  It’s hard on us!  We Codgers have a hard enough time trying to dial a phone number let alone fill out 7 pages of internet paperwork on a smartphone! So we needed help!  We planned to be at the airport early on the morning of our flight, to try and get some help!  we wanted to be at the Lisbon airport at least 3 hours ahead of our actual departure time to Madrid, Spain. We sat at a table in a large food service area with our sweet rolls and coffee, planning our Health Tracking paperwork for Spain. 

   The girls received a text or email explaining that we may have been exposed to COVID-19 during our recent stay in the UK, and to call a 1-866 number. It appeared to be a toll free number that originated in the United States. First of all, we did not visit the UK except to land at Heathrow, grab a chartered vehicle and driver, then go to catch our next flight to Lisbon, out of Gatwick Airport.   We had no contact with anyone except our driver. As we often receive spam calls and emails when traveling in foreign countries, London being mo exception, we thought nothing of it. We reasoned that we should not be getting COVID information texts from the US because we have bee in Iceland and Portugal the last 7 days. 

   Every place we go into to use the free Wi-Fi, we are forced to accept their cookies use policy or you can’t use the internet. We had gotten on the airport’s internet because we were trying to make contact with our driver. That was 4 days ago and we are not feeling any effects of COVID or anything. Then came another message bearing a London number and an internet link to click on. This also seemed to be suspect though I received no such email on my account. So the girls took off to find a health station in the Airport. 

   Approaching two handsome young police officers,  the girls asked for directions to the nearest health attendant. The officers asked why. Debby and Nancy explained our situation and the officers had us gather all our belongings and come with them. They took us to a secluded spot in the airport and called for an EMP type person. 

   From here things progressed along with uncertainty. We waited on the Health authorities. Two uniformed people soon showed up. The young woman EMT was loaded down with more than 60 pounds of gear, as was the young man with her. She was obviously in charge and began asking us for all the details. After much discussion, she decided it would be necessary to call her boss, the Minister of Health. 

   It soon became obvious that we would not be taking this flight to Madrid.  The officers remained with us during the whole time, except when it was shift change time. Minutes turned into hours and hours into several mort. 

   Eventually the very busy Minister of Health called in and began asking more questions. He commended us for our openness and honesty in coming to them instead of simply ignoring the emails. 

   It was still a while before we were cleared by the Lisbon Minister of Health that we could be on our way. By this time our flight had long taken off and we were stuck.   Because we did not tell the airlines that we would not make the flight (we were being detained by the health authorities), we were not allowed to reschedule another flight on our ticket. Instead, we would be required to purchase  4 more fares entirely!  

   To make this more challenging, there is no counter service in the Lisbon Airport. Every transaction must be online. So here are 4 old codgers with barely half a brain between two of us trying to figure everything out in Portuguese!   On top of it all, we are also trying to figure out how to claim our missing luggage!  Did it land in Madrid??  One of the officers assured us the luggage would have been removed from the plane when we failed to board. We just had to find where the airlines stashed it!

   I must give a lot of credit to the good character of the people of Lisbon. We were helped with the utmost kindness all the way through our ordeal. 

   After much waiting we soon had our luggage in hand and were on our way to get help with finding new tickets. A kind lady recalled a travel agent inside the airport and she was willing to help us acquire tickets and even process our health travel documents for Spain!  It took a while!  Debby stayed with her as we waited. 

   We barely made the last flight to Madrid. What a day!!!  Our appreciation to the two young police officers who showed us kindness and respect. Many thanks to the two EMTs who were very tenacious to push the Health Minister for our release and for walking with us throughout the entire process including help with retrieving our luggage and pointing us to someone to get our tickets. And thank you Lisbon for letting us visit your country. We will not be back.