Document of Recovery for travel

Once they are negative you just ask your pediatrician for documentation, just like you might have to ask them for a letter when kiddo returns to school. It is not a big deal. 

Hi there,

Health care provider here— I write them all the time for folks who’ve recently recovered from COVID-19 and are no longer infectious and need to travel. Just ask your pediatrician (they may require a visit/phone visit) and they should be able to help you with a letter. Happy travels! 

My husband got one from a nurse, but your doctor can give you one. The tricky thing is that according to the CDC instructions, you need to provide info on a positive PCR test, which we didn’t have. It all ended up being moot for us, because my husband was able to test negative for our return trip (2 months post covid) and we didn’t have to show anyone his letter to see if it would pass muster. 

We did this recently for a trip to Italy. We first got a PCR test to document the date of the positive result, then waited until symptoms subsided and called our doctor’s office to get a letter of recovery for travel purposes. They were very familiar and had a form letter ready to go; they just signed and dated it and emailed it over. Hope your experience is similarly seamless. Happy travels! 

Hi.  I had to get one of these myself after I tested positive a month before I was to travel internationally.  Turns out they are now pretty standard.  I called my PCP and a form letter was uploaded to my Kaiser app right after the phone call.  In my situation, I had to have a record of a positive PCR test and it was recommended that I do not test again.  I'm fairly positive your pediatrician's office can help you.

Hope your child is feeling well!

In our case we needed a similar letter for return to daycare. We got one from our pediatrician. It starts with "This letter confirms recovery from COVID-19 as you report completion of self-isolation per pandemic public health guidelines and you presently report no infectious symptoms consistent with COVID-19 infection. Dates noted are xxxx." I can't speak to whether this will be accepted by an airline, but would think so. I would suggest getting the letter and then calling the airline. Good luck!

Glad you posted here because we are in the same situation. It’s great if your doctor knows what they are doing, not great if your doctor has no idea. I  went through Kaiser to try to get this and the Kaiser phone tree was stubbornly unhelpful. We don’t even know if our doctor is more helpful because we can’t even get through to her, we just get automated form responses. We tested positive on a home test, but because we tested positive at home, Kaiser wouldn’t authorize a PCR test. The woman on the phone at the records department had no idea what a document of recovery was, and sent my husband a letter that she said would do, but I looked it up on the CDC website and it wouldn’t have worked. So make sure you do your research and your paperwork is in order. A self test won’t be accepted, it has to be a PCR test. I tried to post an article from NYT that was very helpful, but it wouldn’t copy and paste, but you can look it up. It’s called “I’m overseas and I tested positive. What now?” Scroll down to the details about the document of recovery. Good luck! We are bringing proctored test strips with us on our trip just in case something is amiss with our Document of Recovery (if we ever get one). If Kaiser remains uncooperative maybe will go through a third party vendor to get a PCR (since we just got sick) and give us the document when we recover.