Covid testing prior to departure

Hi Friends!
I saw a post about possible locations on the island for testing. Can you give a recommendation for the most efficient testing center? Were you able to make an appointment and what was the cost?
Thanks!

Since that requirement doesn't kick in until January 24, I doubt anyone here will have experience with this, yet.

Check with your resort, Simpson Bay resort is setting up a place next to Hollywood Casino for many of the resorts in the area, I believe it is rapid test only and cost is $70. We are getting tested at Orange Grove Lab which is PCR test and also $70.

We are currently in St. Maarten, I scheduled our pre-departure Covid tests yesterday with SLS (St. Maarten Laboratory Services), wanted to make sure we could get the appointment on the day we needed it. It is a PCR test, we were told results come back within 24 hours. You send them an email with your Name, DOB, address, flight info, Passport #, etc and they then send you an email back with your scheduled test time. You pay at the time of service ($75), and results are uploaded to a patient portal.

Their website is www.sls.sx, the details are listed for what they need in order to schedule your test. Hopefully this all goes as planned, they are the same company our resort is offering testing through, but the resort testing day was too early for our flight.
***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
This is from the email they sent me:

In preparation for your pre-travel COVID-19 screening at the Sint Maarten Laboratory Services (SLS), please read the below instructions carefully. Please note that pretravel screening is on an appointment basis ONLY.

[b]How can you make an appointment for pre-travel screening? Email the following information to: prescreening@sls.sx

- Full Name
- Date of Birth (dd-mm-yyyy)
- Gender
- Address
- Telephone nr.
- Email address
- Date of Travel
- Time of Travel
- Passport nr

Once the information is accepted, an email will be sent to you from SLS with your appointment date and time. Please arrive on time for your appointment!

What will you need for your appointment at the lab? Please provide an ID and payment upon registration. We accept Cash, Maestro and Visa cards.

What to expect from the procedure? The nasal swab procedure is performed by trained staff within the lab and takes only a few seconds.

How will you receive the results? Your PCR results will be available online within 24 hours of collection by accessing your SLS patient portal. Registration of the patient portal will take place upon check in at the lab.


Hope this helps!

Lot of hoops!

What is the time frame from test to departure???

The CDC order says 3 days (no mention of 72 hours) and our resort is telling us that if you leave on Saturday afternoon, you can test on Wednesday morning. Will be interesting to see how it is actually implemented.

We are doing within 72 hours just to be safe. Crazy that the CDC is not more clear on that. I messaged AA on their app, the person on their live chat had no idea if AA would allow us to test Wednesday am for a 2pm Saturday flight or if we would get turned away, so we decided to play it safe.

Good idea. Never know what a gate agent will enforce.

Thank You.

Guests only, but Divi has onsite testing

Please let me know how it goes!

We left before the mandatory testing prior to travel BUT got tested in RI the day we arrived (arrived at 1am) and got neg RT-PCR results 20 hours later. We are MA residents but RI has it down pat with testing...

We arrived yesterday and booked an appointment with a local doctor for a rapid test the day before we leave. It cost $75 per person. I'll let you know if we have any hiccups - we are scheduled to leave on February 9.

We have been able to distance easily and most everyone seems to be masked when appropriate. We did notice that Mullet Bay was packed today, so we avoided there.

For those wondering, here is our experience with Covid testing on the island today:

We have an afternoon flight on Saturday, and opted to test directly at SLS laboratory (St. Maarten Laboratory Services in Little Bay) this morning, to stay within 72 hours of departure. (American Airlines customer service was unable to tell me if we would be allowed on their flight if testing on Wednesday morning at our resort - technically within 3 days, but more than 72 hours, so we decided to play it safe and go to the lab on Thursday.)

Registered online - easy to do with the instructions on their website. Very responsive to emails. Set up our patient portal passwords to get results.
Arrived at 8am for an 8-8:30 am appointment window. Sounds like they do ALL appointments early morning. There were approximately 40 people milling around outside the entrance when we arrived, all masked.
Lady working for SLS handed us a number for our group, we were #27, and they had just called in #11 from the 7:30 am group. Groups ranged from 1-8 people.
We had to wait outside until called to do our final registration and payment before testing - we were called in for paperwork at 10:10. Took awhile to do the paperwork, even though we had provided all the info in an email prior and set up our passwords on their patient portal prior to arrival at the clinic.
After completing the paperwork we were directed to a shaded tent in the back of the clinic - from there we were called almost immediately for testing, which took just a few minutes, and were back on the road at 10:30 am. Total time elapsed was 2.5 hours, we did not expect to wait so long with an appointment!
Received our results in the patient portal this evening, sometime between 4pm and 9:30 pm.

Takeaways:

1)Even though we had an appointment, it took almost 2.5 hours before we were actually tested. I felt bad for people waiting with kids and babies in tow! You have to wait outside, and there was very limited shaded area to stand in. They did have 5-6 chairs on the sidewalk, and steps to sit on, but most had to stand. I suspect part of this was due to it being the start of ramped up testing and working out the kinks.

2) Traffic from Oyster Pond to the lab in Little Bay on Hamster Ave was slow! Took us about 35 minutes to get there, we left at 7:25 am.

3) The people working at the lab were SUPER nice, and everything was very clean and professional feeling. Very diligent about everyone wearing masks, sanitizing hands, etc.

4) We had our results back the same evening, which was great.

5) Cost was $75, we paid cash but I did see some people using credit cards.

6) A guy I was chatting with as we waited said one of his friends was denied boarding back to the US yesterday as his test was more than 72 hours old (it was 77 hours old), not sure if that was on St. Maarten or elsewhere, but that was what he told me.

Hope this answers some questions for those wondering!

Thank you for this post, we have an appointment at the same location on 2/7 at 1:30 p.m. and it's nice to know what to expect.

How did you present results to the airline? Did you have printed results to present to the ticket agent?

Hi Bill, we fly out tomorrow, and plan to show electronic copies of our results. With the portal you can download your results as a PDF, I did that and then emailed it as an attachment to myself. We plan to just pull up the email attachment to show at the airport, this worked coming down for one in our party who did not have a printed copy, so I am hopeful it works going back. A printer is the one thing I did not pack!

Thanks for the updates and good luck. I am not sure where you are staying but most resorts, even small ones, will have a printer one can use for printing a few pages.

Tina--thanks so much for posting your experience. Does not sound terribly pleasant, but I read somewhere a report from someone who went to the Mullet Bay Clinic, and it was even worse..

Tina, I have used the printer next to the bar area at OBBR for printing before. I had a thumb drive with me and plugged that in and printed. You might even be able to pull up your email on the computer they have in there.

Just saw this on the CDC website - not sure if it was recently added, or if I missed it earlier:

Why does the Order specify 3 days rather than 72 hours? What is considered 3 days?
The 3-day period is the 3 days before the flight’s departure. The Order uses a 3-day timeframe instead of 72 hours to provide more flexibility to the traveler. By using a 3-day window, test validity does not depend on the time of the flight or the time of day that the test was administered.

For example, if a passenger’s flight is at 1pm on a Friday, the passenger could board with a negative test that was taken any time on the prior Tuesday or after.


Also relevant:

What is a verifiable test result?
A verifiable test result must be in the form of written documentation (paper or electronic copy) of a laboratory test result. Testing must be performed using a viral test (NAAT or antigen), and negative results must be presented to the airline prior to boarding. The test result documentation must include information that identifies the person, a specimen collection date and the type of test. A negative test result must show test was done within the 3 days before the flight. A positive test result must show the test was done within the 3 months before the flight.