Warning: today’s is going to be a bit of a geeky post about Dad’s potential covid-19 status and testing, testing, testing…
I reported Mum’s death from covid-19 to the GP on 1 May and we were aware she tested positive in hospital on 28 April. Mum’s been the only recorded death from covid-19 in the village. In an ideal world, all the people she was in contact with should have been traced and tested, including Dad and John (their next-door neighbour who helped pick Mum up on 24 April 2020).
The GP receptionist told me that the practice doesn’t have any tests available for their own front-line workers, let alone patients, so that avenue is closed.
At the very end of April, the government made it possible for people to apply for testing, first for NHS workers and then for anyone over 65. Testing is available as home kits or at drive-in centres by applying on-line at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-getting-tested#who-can-be-tested. It wouldn’t be safe for me to drive Dad to a test centre, so a home test would be the only option.
The tests have to be done within 5 days of developing symptoms to be effective. I’ve been applying for a test since the government website went online and always got one of the following two messages.
I’m still trying to get a home test, but as the days go by, I’m relying much more on my common-sense empirical approach based on the following average timeline from patient.uk.
Based on this, Dad could only have been exposed to the virus between 23-25 April when Mum was discharged to spend two nights at home, so his Day -5 would fall in this period.
Day 0 could be expected to occur on or before 30 April, and I did notice that Dad developed a dry cough on that day. He also reported feeling “like a zombie” and suddenly exhausted at around the same time.
The safest thing to assume in lieu of testing is that Dad IS positive and day 0 was 30 April at the latest.
If that’s the case, he’s already reached day 5 without any severe symptoms. He’s still coughing, but it’s not keeping him awake. His temperature, oxygen saturation and blood pressure are normal. He feels absolutely awful, but that’s mainly because he’s grief-stricken. He’s managing to get up and make himself simple meals in his isolation goldfish bowl.
I’m keeping everything crossed that he gets through the next couple of days without worsening. If he gets past day 7, we can be cautiously optimistic that he’s past the danger point. By day 14 (14 May), he’ll be through his quarantine.
I feel very optimistic that John, his next door neighbour, hasn’t picked anything up. I spoke to him yesterday and he’d reached day 10 with no symptoms. As 97% of people develop their symptoms by day 11, we can start to breathe a sigh of relief if he’s still ok today. John’s so sweet that when I phoned him yesterday, he was more concerned about me than about his potential brush with the virus.
I’m still trying to get Dad a test of course. However, we wouldn’t be able to rely on the result as he wouldn’t be tested until day 7 at the earliest. This is because he’s already had suspect symptoms for 5 days and we wouldn’t get the test for 2 days even if I could order one today.
There’s been a lot of anecdotal evidence of false negative test results. In fact one of Mum’s doctors in hospital told me that the coronavirus test she had just before discharge may well have been a false negative.
Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of counting on my fingers over the last week or so and wanted to write this all down at some stage.
2022 and all that 