TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Recent IDNOW Covid Test Experience

Wife and I are scheduled to get the Walgreens' IDNOW covid test this coming Friday for a Monday flight to St. Maarten. I have read the fairly recent thread on the IDNOW test but was wondering if anyone has had a recent experience using this test.....both regarding St. Maarten approval and acceptance by airline gate agents?

We used it, and had approvals both from the lab & EHAS in less than 2 hours. No problem at the airport.

Walgreen's IDNow test is a Nucleic Acid Amplification Test, NAAT. If you look at the CDC website, you'll see NAAT's as being the "Gold Standard" for Covid testing. PCR testing is good, too - it's just more well known because it was put into use first. The IDNow test isn't specifically listed on the EHAS site, so some people on social media are having hissy fits over its validity, despite several emails posted online from EHAS that they accept it and tens of thousands of people having used it successfully. There have been some reports of gate agents holding up people over this test, mainly all Delta, but everyone has been able to get someone else involved who knew better.

You will have NO problem using it for your Pre-Approval letter from EHAS. They treat IDNow the same as a PCR test as far as time limits. We used the IDNow test in June, as did our entire family of eight, and just about everyone we met during our month there used Walgreen's IDNow as well. As far as the airline gate agents, there were some posts a while back on Facebook like I wrote above but given their training (esp Delta) since then, it would be amazing if you still had that problem now.

When you travel to other islands, you'll find that the NAAT tests like the IDNow are the preferred. Check Hawaii's and the USVI's admission guidelines, for instance.

ID Now is the way to go. We used 2 weeks for our SXM trip.

Is the window for the IDnow test 48 or 72 hours

Where can I find these emails? Would be nice to have in case someone questions the validity of the test.

From everything I've read it's 72 hours......same as PCR.

Correct

We used Walgreens ID NOW. Got approval very quickly--20mins. Problem at Delta counter when agent initially refused it because it didn't have PCR on the results page. Eventually made it through after talking with her a little while--having all the EHAS doc printed is a help.

"Where can I find these emails? Would be nice to have in case someone questions the validity of the test."

Back in June when Delta Gate Agents were creating issues over the tests, several people posted their EHAS emails re the IDNow test being totally valid on various Facebook groups in Cut and Paste or PDF formats. The funny parts were the stories people posted along with them - like showing the Gate Agent their EHAS email copy, and the Gate Agent asking if they could make a copy of it, etc.