We tried to return home from Belize that way to avoid the $2000. 3 day hotel jail quarantine stay. It was no problem (and cheaper) to reroute our flight to BUF instead of YYZ. I had no problem booking a rental car at BUF with a drop off at YYZ (where our kids would leave our car). Since our flight was going to land in Buffalo in the evening we thought we would book a hotel and then drive home the following morning since our PCR test from Belize would still have lots of time left before the 72 hr timeframe the Cndn Govt was allowing. The big snag came when the Govt announced that all (not non-essential) people doing land crossings must get a PCR test done in the USA even if they were in possession of a valid one from another country.
We called at least a dozen labs in the greater Buffalo area and even called the Erie County Health Dept trying to find a lab that could do the test and get the results back to us within the 24hrs that international travelers were allowed by NY State law to transit the state (get from airport to border or 1 side of state to the other). Since the PCR test was not as commonly performed there most labs sent their samples to Boston for testing and the results were returned between 3 & 7 days later. By following the Cndn Govt rule we were being forced to break the NY State law. I emailed our Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Transportation and the Minister of Safety and Emergency to ask why a PCR test from any country in the world was good enough to fly into Canada but to drive across the border the traveler must get a PCR test done in the USA. Of course no body could give us a reason except to say that was the law.
We then looked into delaying our connection in Charlotte NC by a day or so (which has no quarantine rule) in order to get a PCR test done there and then fly to BUF and pickup our rental car. Again most labs in the Charlotte area said it would be a minimum of 48 hrs and most likely 72 hrs to get the results back and the tests were several hundred dollars each. By the time we added up the tests costs, the hotel stay, difference in airfare (nominal), a rental car or taxis to get around Charlotte, and meals while there, the cost was approaching the price of the Toronto hotel jail stay.
So we ended up changing our flight back to Toronto (no charge, thanks AA) and booking the cheapest Gov't approved hotel stay we could find. We had a PCR test to leave Belize, another one upon landing in Toronto, and another one 10 days later -all negative, and as of today have completed our total of 14 days quarantine. All this after leaving a county that has had fewer positive cases and way less deaths in the last month, than what the Simcoe-Muskoka area of Ontario (where we live) has in 1 day,
and the population of Belize is nearly 100K more than Simcoe-Muskoka.
~Diane
