Think DP has HAD coronavirus who to notify?

[Icantrememebrtheartist]

Just been told by a family member that we must notify Public Health England so he can be swabbed and they will want to swab everyone he's been in contact with. Is this true?

Having a bit of a panic!

DP spent a couple of days feeling terrible with a temp and aches, at the end of feb, a few days later he lost all sense of taste and smell and his nose and eye sockets hurt and he put it down to sinusitis, his senses came back after three weeks. He had a very minor almost unnoticeable dry cough when he lost his senses. We didn't think he had it because he didn't have the cough, they spoke about at the end of Feb and the loss of senses wasn't added to the list of symptoms until recently.

I thought only patients and NHS were being swabbed at the moment.

Perhaps they are getting confused by the fact that it is a notifiable disease? But that just means doctors have to notify the health authority when a case is suspected/diagnosed.

I had all the symptoms in early February, at the time I did ring 111 who were not interested as there were no community case transmissions at that point and I had not been abroad. I did stress that I could have come into contact with someone who had been abroad unknowingly through my work. My dry cough lasted 4 weeks and the symptoms left me floored for about three weeks. Seeing as how they wont be testing is all I guess I will never know.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I do watch the news so I am aware of the situation and availability of the tests and who is prioritised at the moment, but having a family member so horrified we hadn't notified anyone made me question myself.

I think there will be a lot of people that have already had this virus. I also have two family members and two friends who were 'floored' as they put it with what they thought was flu back in January and two of those were then diagnosed with chest infections too. I wonder....