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People travel through Salt Lake City International Airport on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, in Salt Lake City. (AP)
If Your Time is short
Research your destination’s public health advisories and concerns. Make a doctor's appointment to get any recommended vaccines and prescriptions ahead of time. Consider travel health insurance.
Hand-wash regularly. Wear a face mask in crowded areas. Rest and hydrate while traveling.
Don’t ignore symptoms. If you do get sick, let your fellow travelers know. If it gets worse, see a doctor.
On one day, my healthy 86-year-old grandmother and I were waltzing through Paris in matching berets. Three days later, we were riding in an ambulance to an Austrian hospital after she fainted.
I tried to communicate with German-speaking paramedics through a phone translation app. I called my parents in the middle of the night for her medical history.
After months of preparation, a COVID-19 infection threw our carefully planned trip off course. Thankfully, my grandmother has recovered from her international emergency stay. But, our detour taught me a lot about the dos and don'ts of a healthy vacation: Do plan ahead. Don’t ignore symptoms. Do take rests. Don’t push yourself to go-go-go.
Although the headlines about hantavirus and Ebola may put travelers on edge, contracting those diseases is comparatively rare. Most travelers are more likely to experience more common infections, such as the flu, diarrhea, a cold or, like us, COVID-19. Testing my grandmother's infection sooner and knowing her international health coverage from the jump would have saved us some pain.
Here’s what experts say are the best ways to prepare for travel and avoid infection, and what to do if you come down with something.
Grace Abels and her grandmother standing in front of the Eiffel Tower on May 19, 2026. (Courtesy Grace Abels)
Before you pack
Research your destination. If you are traveling abroad, check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention travelers’ website for country-specific health advisories. Each country page includes notices of any outbreaks, recommended vaccinations for the region, and other infectious diseases that spread locally. Double check if the country requires certain vaccines for entry.
Even for domestic travel, it is worth checking whether the CDC has flagged any local outbreaks or if a specific mosquito or tick-borne illness is common in that region.
"If you don't know about Lyme disease, Connecticut's a pretty dangerous place," said Dr. Kenneth Dardick, a travel medicine specialist and family medicine doctor in Mansfield, Connecticut. Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness that spreads in that region.
Check the website again a week or two before you leave to make sure there are no new outbreaks.
Assess your risk level. The risk of getting certain infectious diseases depends on your activities. Will you be going to an all-inclusive resort in a city? If so, you’re probably at low risk of catching something from livestock, for example.
If your plans include trips to rural areas, proximity to wild animals, hiking or farming, it’s worth looking into what infectious diseases or disease-carrying insects or animals you may be exposed to.
Review your packing list. What you learn from your research may influence what you pack. Do you need a mosquito net, insect repellent or long-sleeved shirts to stop bug bites? What about patches for blisters or just-in-case allergy, anti-nausea or anti-diarrheal medications?
Gather your health documentation. It’s smart to have information about your health insurance, prescriptions and medical history easily accessible.
We hadn’t assembled this information ahead of time for my grandma. Luckily she was awake and able to tell the paramedics about her health history and medications, but if she hadn’t been, I would’ve had only a partial picture.
Carry your medications in their original prescription bottles, especially for any opiates or other controlled substances. I had to decode my grandma’s medication dosages from unlabeled tiny pills in her purse.
Bring a few extra doses of regular medications in case your trip is delayed. My grandma ended up staying in Europe four additional days to recover, and was grateful she planned for that.
Decide if you need travel health insurance. Many U.S. health insurance plans have limited to no coverage for medical treatment abroad — including Medicare. Dardick recommends purchasing a short-term travel health insurance plan.
My grandma had travel insurance and it was a relief to know that getting her care wouldn’t be exorbitantly expensive. Don’t just get it though — share your travel insurance information with your emergency contact and travel companions. In our case, paramedics were shouting over one another in German as I scrambled to search my grand…
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