Significant issues remain even if you have insurance
Note: Many insurers have excluded cover for COVID-19. Please check to see what cover you have.
Even if your insurance plan does include cover for COVID-19, there remain significant practical issues when delivering medical treatment globally. Please research the situation wherever you are heading.
- Some Air Assistance companies (emergency evacuations) are transporting members with COVID-19. However, even if an emergency flight is available, there are still major challenges, particularly when crossing country borders for medical treatment.
- Commercial flights are still rarely available. And even if a flight is booked, there is no guarantee that it will not be canceled. These flights cannot be relied upon for a medical emergency. This remains a big problem for the movement of patients.
- Each country has different requirements for non-national entry. In some areas of the world this is getting worse (despite Europe and some parts of Asia improving).
- Some countries are not allowing the movement of members within-country because the facilities that need to receive them are either full or only treating COVID-19 patients.
- There are some countries that cannot guarantee that the member will be allowed back into the country once they leave.
- There are challenges with speaking to doctors to receive a full medical report before an evacuation decision can be made. This is usually down to these doctors having to deal with a greatly increased patient load.
- There can be restrictions within a country. This means that the guidance for entry into the country may vary significantly from hot spots within the country.
Summary
Overall, we’re not seeing a significant improvement that would suggest we are truly coming out the other side of these challenges, and it depends on where the member is located.
We are taking each case on its own merit and doing whatever we can do to move anyone who is deemed an emergency. It is very challenging at the moment, with a lot of decisions out of our hands.
We hope this provides further context for your teams’ preparations.
Follow up
If your agency requires assistance in researching the safety concerns of your members’ locations, please contact us to see if we can help. We partner with WorldAware to keep our members updated on COVID-19, terrorism, natural disasters, political unrest, protests and other concerns globally. We can let you know what info we have for your situation info@talent-trust.com.
Talent Trust provides insurance and more for missionaries. Please contact us if you are looking for medical or travel insurance for your members that includes COVID-19 cover. Go to www.talent-trust.com
