COVID test question

[vwrestler171]

Have any recent cruisers been tested with the ID NOW test from Walgreens?  Not a lot of options near my home and it is either that or a PCR which can take 2+days.  

[Tapi]

We did IDNOW to sail on the MSC Meraviglia a month ago. MSC’s health and safety protocols specified that NAAT tests were allowed, and that’s what the IDNOW test is. If Carnival accepts molecular NAAT tests, the IDNOW test will qualify. 
 

It was SUPER easy and free of charge. They also didn’t ask for our insurance information even though we had it. We scheduled our appointments online and proceeded to the pharmacy drive thru window. We self tested and were on our way within 15-20 minutes. 
 

The results were supposed to be ready within 24 hours but we had them back in one hour. We received the email with the results and the link to the PDF files to be printed to take to the port (which includes all the information required by the cruise line). 
 

At the port, we showed the results and they were accepted without a single question. If Carnival specifically accepts NAAT tests, I highly recommend the IDNOW test. 

EDIT:

 

We did take PCR tests the same day at CVS as a backup, and they came back in a little over 24 hours even though they said that it could take up to 3 days. We still used the Walgreens IDNOW results. We never had to show the PCR results. 

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by Tapi

[vwrestler171]

Carnival does accept NAAT tests, but I didn't know that their ID NOW is a NAAT test.  It said BINAX NOW, which is similar to the home testing.

[Tapi]

20 hours ago, vwrestler171 said:

Carnival does accept NAAT tests, but I didn't know that their ID NOW is a NAAT test.  It said BINAX NOW, which is similar to the home testing.

Walgreens offers both IDNOW (NAAT) and BINAX (Antigen). They are not the same test. Since we were traveling with children too young to be vaccinated, we couldn’t do antigen tests, so the BINAX was out of the question. Make sure you click on the right test. It can be a bit confusing when making the appointment online. 

[bstel]

21 hours ago, vwrestler171 said:

Have any recent cruisers been tested with the ID NOW test from Walgreens?  Not a lot of options near my home and it is either that or a PCR which can take 2+days.  

If you are vaccinated there is no reason to do a NAAT/PCR test.  we just got back from Pride sailing last week.  we had our kids who were under 12 so we did the ID NOW test for them 3 days out and then we did an antigen test at CVS 2 days out and had no issues.  But the first girl who looked at our NAAT ID NOW results had no idea what NAAT was, so I had to educate her.

[bstel]

57 minutes ago, Tapi said:

Walgreens offers both IDNOW (NAAT) and BINAX (Antigen). They are not the same test. Since we were traveling with children too young to be vaccinated, we couldn’t do antigen tests, so the BINAX was out of the question. Make sure you click on the right test. It can be a bit confusing when making the appointment online. 

that's not true.  vaccinated adults can still do an antigen test when traveling with unvaccinated kids who have to do the PCR.  we just did this last week on Pride out of Baltimore

[Tapi]

16 minutes ago, bstel said:

that's not true.  vaccinated adults can still do an antigen test when traveling with unvaccinated kids who have to do the PCR.

I should clarify what I meant on my previous post. We couldn’t do antigen tests for our unvaccinated children. So since they had to do PCR or NAAT, we scheduled the same NAAT test for everybody instead of having adults do Antigen and kids PCR/NAAT. For us, it didn’t make sense to schedule different types of tests with different turnaround times since we had to wait for all of the results anyway. 
 

When we received our results, all 4 came in at the same time. I considered that to be ideal. The IDNOW (NAAT) test was super easy to self administer and we had the results in a little over one hour. 

[my kids mama]

21 hours ago, vwrestler171 said:

Have any recent cruisers been tested with the ID NOW test from Walgreens?  Not a lot of options near my home and it is either that or a PCR which can take 2+days.  

My advice is to order the Binax at home self test kit.  It came pretty promptly to my door. 

 

[Knights on the Beach]

22 hours ago, vwrestler171 said:

Have any recent cruisers been tested with the ID NOW test from Walgreens?  Not a lot of options near my home and it is either that or a PCR which can take 2+days.  

YES for our 8/26 Magic cruise - it was super easy and we had our results about 30 minutes later.  It says ID NOW on the website and the lab results we got said NAAT.  

[dude_hdt]

I did the Walgreen ID NOW test for my Vista cruise on Oct 2nd.  It was accepted w/o question at the terminal.