Howdy, all! We are booked in (Yacht Club, I hope it's as good as the hype) cabins on MSC Seaview out of Rio de Janeiro on 18 December. It looks like MSC requires a COVID test to be performed for all guests, vaccinated or not, within 24 hours before boarding the ship in Rio de Janeiro. OK, a bit pointless I think, but OK. The problem is that it can't be a self-administered rapid antigen test. Does anybody know if on-line proctored tests are acceptable to MSC? MSC "Customer Support" has not been very helpful when asked, just reading me the quote from the MSC web page:
"For Cruises longer than 6 nights:
- All guests (ages 3 years old or older) are required to provide a COVID-19 antigen or PCR-RT test 24 hours before embarkation.
A rapid antigen self-test is not valid for travel purposes."
I have found some clinics that will do the tests (we need 6 of them) at a reasonable price ($50 USD or so), but the results will take 2 business days to receive (we board the ship on Sunday, so to meet the 24-hour requirement the tests will have to be done on Saturday, and two business days puts us into Tuesday). MSC does not provide the tests, at any price, either at the pier or on the ship. If proctored on-line tests are not acceptable, then it seems like MSC has set up an impossible situation. Has anybody managed to navigate this requirement in Rio? Any suggestions?