Vault/Covid Testing For Hawaii Travel Experience

[ZephyrHawk]

For everyone who's been as worried about testing in advance of an upcoming Hawaii/Aulani trip as I have, I figured I'd start a thread chronicling my family's experiences.

There are three of us (Me, DH and DD8), and we'll be doing the Vault test later this morning. DD and I plan to take the test around 8:30 this morning and DH probably a bit later. Originally, I was worried about the time of day that we had to take the tests as the last leg of our trip to Maui would be leaving around 2pm PST on Friday. I assumed that meant I had to have us take the tests after 5pm (here in the EST) on Tuesday, and then rush to catch the last UPS air shipment out of our local branch. After some online discussion with Vault I found out that the the time you take the test under the Zoom direction of a physician is not time-stamped in any way. Thus it doesn't matter what time of day you take the test, as long as its within 3 days before your flight. The Vault rep I spoke with indicated that the State of Hawaii was aware of this. Here's hoping that guy wasn't just blowing smoke.

I also have us scheduled for backup rapid tests at Walgreens Thursday afternoon (in case our Vault results don't come in before then). We'll be leaving the Midwest early Friday morning (fingers crossed).

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Okay - Description of the test:

I logged on at about 8:30am. The instructions said to scan the barcode on the test tube by holding it up to my screen. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to open the pastic wrapping around the tube yet (since there were warnings all oer saying not to open it!), so I managed to scan the code through the wrapping. I then was prompted to enter the tracking code on the return pacakging I had been provided. We then waited only a few seconds before we were logged into a zoom meeting with a physician.

She was very nice. I had my ID with me, but she said it wasn't necessary to show it. I asked if we could DD8 at the same time as me. She said it was do-able, but that I'd have to register her test tube as I had just registered mine. She put me in her waiting room for a few minutes while I went through and scanned in DD8's info. Oh, and she told me it was okay to remove the test tubes from the packaging to scan them.

Once we were back on with the doctor, she explained that we needed to spit into the tube up to a line drawn on its side. She said it needed to be all liquid to the line (not bubbles). The doctor put us in the waiting room again (she didn't watch us spit). I made sure that I and DD8 collected spit over the line, but the doctor said that wasn't necessary. I then removed the funnels from the top of the tubes and had to screw a different top on. It was somewhat hard to do. Then the tubes were closed up in a biohazard bag, then sealed in a cardboard box, and finally put in a mailing bag with the pre-paid UPS info on it. The whole experience took 15 minutes max.

I then drove the boxes to the local UPS store and dropped them off. DH did his own test a little later on and dropped off his own box to UPS. So....we'll see where this goes!

 

[ZephyrHawk]

I just thought of something that might be important for folks to know if they're going to use Vault with kids: You're required to make a separate account for your child. It's linked to your account, but it needs a separate email associated with it. Luckily I had an extra email account already set up for myself that I was able to send DD8's information to, but especially if you have multiple kids, I can see how this would get annoying. Also, even though I set the email up correctly, somehow it didn't show that a test got ordered for her (she never got the confirmation email). So, I had to follow up with Vault customer service which, I have to admit, was really prompt and helpful. They got the issue straightened out (whatever it was) and answered several other questions I had.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

So, I managed to hold-off on obsessively checking on the delivery status of our packages until about 9am this morning. They haven't been delivered to the Vault testing facility yet, and as current, the estimated time of delivery is 12pm today. I'm really hoping that's an over-estimate, similar to what Disney does with attraction lines, and that the samples will, in fact, arrive sooner.

 

[braysmommy]

Hopefully soon! It is nice that Vault only uses date and not time stamped to make it a bit easier. We were gong to use them but have decided to go with Walgreens instead if requirements don't change before June.

 

[tidefan]

Hopefully soon! It is nice that Vault only uses date and not time stamped to make it a bit easier. We were gong to use them but have decided to go with Walgreens instead if requirements don't change before June.

We are going either Walgreens or American Family Care...

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Afternoon update: So, around 1pm or so DH and DD8 got their emails indicating their tests had arrived. Me? Nothing. So, I waited an hour or so, then I wrote to them. Another hour or so later I finally got my confirmation email. So, at least they have our samples. And now? We wait. Again.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Evening update: After dinner this evening, DH opened his email to find his test results came in. Negative. I checked DD8's account and her results were in as well. Negative again. Me? Nothing. But recalling my experience this afternoon, I decided to give it a little while and check again. Low and behold, at about 9:15pm, my test results came in. Also negative. I uploaded everyone's info to Hawaii Safe Travels. Vault gave two different "results" .pdfs, so I just uploaded both documents for everyone. We were all listed as Covid Negative on the site almost immediately.

So....I guess we're going to Hawaii.



Anywho, total time from test-taking to results in my inbox was a little over 36 hours. Not too shabby! But that being said, I did have test done mid-week, and I know most people who have been having problems have had their results pending over a weekend. Point is, Vault worked for us, but "your results may vary".

 

[braysmommy]

Have fun! Vault isn't recommended if you have a Tue/Wed flight since UPS doesn't deliver/pick up on Sunday so for anyone planning to use Vault you make a good point about slowness over the weekend.

 

[Alexander]

I’m not comfortable at all with using Vault. 36 hours is way to long for my nerves! My confidence in shipping/receiving/testing/reporting is lacking. So glad it worked out for you, but I much prefer Walgreens and have my results in a couple of hours.