If you're lucky enough to be able to fly to Vienna right now—flights from the United States and other places with bad Covid-19 outbreaks have been canceled—you're still asked to quarantine when you get there.
All visitors arriving to the Austrian capital must enter a two-week, self-supported quarantine unless they can show officials a negative test result for the coronavirus. And the test result must be less than four days old.
Asking people to isolate for a fortnight is a travel killer, so Austrian authorities have come up with a workaround.
Any visitor who doesn't have a Covid-19 test result to present may now obtain one upon arrival.
The test costs €190 (US$205) and results are ready within three hours. If the result is negative, arriving visitors may proceed into the country the normal way, without going into isolation for two weeks first.
This style of testing is becoming more common in the travel space. Among airlines, Emirates has also announced on-the-spot testing as a way of obtaining travel permissions for passengers.
It's too early to know if on-demand testing will become widespread, but so far it's one of the smoother solutions we have.
For visitors to Vienna, you'll need to factor an extra $200 into flight expenses if you want to escape that quarantine.
