Coronavirus
 

Hi everyone

I here that Turkey have just closed the boarder with Iran due to Coronavirus. Is anyone on the ground that could advise for people going that way

I am heading down to Cape Town via West Africa in a couple of months so am interested in the situation that way. Hopefully it will not get to Africa it would be devastating for the people

I think there are plenty more chapters to be written before we get to the end of this particular book. The bug isn't pandemic (yet) but still people are locking down whole towns... countries could easily follow. I'm supposed to be heading east at the end of April, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get there and back so the question is, go at all?

And that's even without thinking about what happens if you do get the virus in the middle of nowhere.

Agreed - I'm getting pretty apprehensive about this.

I have a flight booked on March 4 from Canada to Sicily (via Rome), where I intend to pick up my moto from storage and then take the ferry to Tunisia & spend a few weeks riding in Tunisia.

Today's news reports that Tunisia has refused a few flights from northern Italy. It's not too much of a jump from that to shutting down the ferry service from Sicily to Tunisia.

As I mentioned in a post I made a few weeks ago, I'm not so much worried about catching the virus as I am worried about getting trapped somewhere because borders get shut down for quarantine.

Interesting to note that the word " quarantine" has its origin in Italian - quarenta is the Italian word for "40", which was the number of days that a ship had to sit offshore at anchor back in 17th century Italy during the Black Death (plague) epidemics.

Michael

corona virus Covid19
 

Hi all,
Our local travel medicine guru, Gunnar Hasle of Reiselivsklinikken, gave an interview recently where he warned that the real worry for travellers is quarantines and closed borders.
I also think we have only seen the beginning of this, impossible to predict what happens as the virus inevitably spreads, but this is definitely not the best time for travelling.

Peter, in Oslo

This is going to go on for some time yet. Coronavirus is a similar bug to flu and that normally tails off from the spring onwards when the uv levels from sunshine increase. My guess is that Corona will go the same way but there's always a lag period so I'm expecting isolation processes - closing borders / stopping flights / cancelling events etc to be around for a while. I have wondered whether Grant's looking at the UK HUBB meet in June.

We've got a lot of travel activity coming up in the next few months which could be affected - a USA bike trip in late April, Sweden in May, Morocco in August and Japan in Sept, but even more concerning is that both my wife and daughter are front line medical staff - daughter's going be working A&E in one of the largest London hospitals shortly. It's a bit worrying that the best we can do in this day and age is cross our fingers. :(

I am curious if the outbreak is having an impact on HU travelers meetings? I am personally not worried.

I haven’t been to a HU meet yet - hopefully I will this year - but the impression I get is that there is plenty of fresh air and being in Wales we are almost certain to have very high levels of UV. doh So hopefully the meet will be on.

Interesting to read this 3 months on. i suspect none of the above actually happened :-(

Certainly none of my stuff happened and the earliest I'm looking at getting going again is the French HUBB meeting in Sept as I have to go to France for 'work' anyway so it'll be two birds with one stone.