Just take a PCR FFS!!

[KeyLimeFly]

We’re at PIL for Xmas. MIL had mild cold symptoms (so I thought) midweek. The kids have both had colds and she looked after them the weekend previously so I was happy to assume it was that seeing as she’d had negative LFTs and pretty much the same symptoms as the children had. However, she’s now been in bed for four days. She still won’t take a fucking PCR. It’s driving me a bit mad. I work with vulnerable people, it’s actually pretty important that I know whether she has it. I must’ve said 10 times ‘you need to take a PCR’. She keeps saying she needs to call the doctors and won’t listen to me that the first thing they’ll do is get her to take a test.

AIBU to be pretty cheesed off now?

Through this debacle for our family also lfts have proved very accurate but not that sensitive. No one has tested positive on them until they had symptoms and only then they had positive pcr. Some had negative pcr the day before positive lateral flow.

That’s confusing sorry but for us the lateral flows have been no more or less accurate than the pcrs.

Did you PCR your kids when they had cold symptoms? Omicron presents like a cold, your kids have quite possibly given covid to your mum.

Test yourself? Why didn't you get your kids tested when they showed colds? Bit rich expecting her to test and not yourselves. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Question: did you get your children PCR tests when they had their "colds" and she was looking after them?

I know LFT are more likely to give false results but surely if you've done several, especially if from different boxes, they're all negative, then the chances its covid must be very low indeed. I'd trust the multiple LFTs they'd taken.

I don’t understand about the LFT with cold symptoms - aren’t people advised to have a PCR when symptomatic?

Perhaps just let her contact the GP and let them advise her. I get the frustration though.

@BeLessMe

The majority of people I know with it, tested positive on LFT and started isolating based on that

Whereas I know people that have never had positive on LFT but were positive on PCR.

Agreed but if you gave a positive lft, chances are you have covid and you should isolate on that unless PCR negative. I wonder how many thousands of unreported cases there are based on people not bothering to get a pcr when lat flow is positive. Then add onto that all the times lft is negative and pcr positive

So your kids has symptoms, she looked after them for you but you didn't test them before letting her? Now you're pissed off that she hasn't tested? But you need to know? Riiiight. Yeah. Wharra bitch

@The MarzipanDildo
"OP doesn’t have symptoms (?) so technically she would have to pay for a PCR, her MIL would get it for free"

PCRs are all free! No one pays for a PCR test unless for travel purposes

Also presumably the OP has been in contact with someone symptomatic. I'd be PCR-ing myself

@IggysPop

I don’t understand about the LFT with cold symptoms - aren’t people advised to have a PCR when symptomatic?

Perhaps just let her contact the GP and let them advise her. I get the frustration though.

Yes. Yes they are! Zoe app is now reporting this

@CornishGem1975

Unpopular opinion. If we all stop with the incessant testing madness, life will get back to normal a whole lot quicker.

You realise you've basically said if we weren't testing so much there would be less Covid? Jeezo.

[quote HomeCountiesMum]@The MarzipanDildo
"OP doesn’t have symptoms (?) so technically she would have to pay for a PCR, her MIL would get it for free"

PCRs are all free! No one pays for a PCR test unless for travel purposes [/quote]
Oh right, I thought you had to say you had symptoms to get one though? (This may be a thing of the past)

I’m a healthy person in my thirties and I got a PCR to prove I didn’t have covid when I got a cough, two hours later I was so ill I could barely move and stayed in bed for days, only able to move to go to the toilet. My DCs brought me cups of tea.
No way would I have had the strength to get up and go out to get a test.

Aaaaand the op doesn't return. Typical!

Leave her to it and pcr yourselves

Why didn't you just go home when she became ill with potential covid symptoms?

I don't think you have any right to demand she takes a PCR, but if you had done the rational thing and gone home, it wouldn't be your problem would it?

I have covid now (confirmed by LFT then PCR) and it is literally cold symptoms. I can still taste, smell, 1 day of a temperature but I'm left with a blocked nose and sore throat. If I didn't have the positive test I would've just dosed up with paracetamol and got on with my life.

They need to get a test, but in the meantime you should lft every day assuming that they're positive if they refuse to.

Order her a PCR and drop it in the postbox for her. No excuse then.