How many of you have experience of testing being refused despite symptoms?

[mrjellyisnotscary]

Inspired by another thread where MrsSpenserGregson (can't tag for some reason) said that her GP wouldn't test despite having all the symptoms, as he hadn't recently returned from Wuhan etc, nor been in known contact with someone infected. More worrying was that he said if he had it he'd get over it. I'm sure he will, but how does that help with reducing infection rates?

I thought that it was now accepted that people were testing positive with no known travel / person link?

[ladyflower23]

I read that about 100 GP practices were authorised to test patients who presented with cold symptoms so I guess if your GP practice is one of these and you call them direct rather than 111 you may end up being tested?

[Purplewhitelie]

My kids school is huge and all came back from an Italy trip. They all have cough and cold now.

[TeacupDrama]

The vast majority of people with symptoms will actually have normal cold and flu viruses rather than covid 19 unless they have contacted someone with covid 99% of those tested either had nothing or ordinary virus

[OhTheRoses]

How to the elderly with chronic illnesses treated in hospital for months catch it. I can't imagine they are jetting to Italy, China, wuhan, etc.

Personally I think it's all a bit ott and we should all be carrying on. It's neither small pox nor the plague, the symptoms don't include diarrhoea so why has all the bog roll sold out

[VanGoghsDog]

Bog roll has sold out in case of isolation. If you have a family of four who are usually out of the house all day and suddenly all four of you need to be contained for two weeks it stands to reason you need more food and loo roll.

I've had a cough since Boxing Day, I really hope we are not told to isolate with any symptoms at all as I'm self employed and that will be the end of my income.
Of course, I don't actually know I still have the same cough, I could have caught a different one at some point. But it doesn't seem to have let up much - I was on the verge of going to the GP when all this started and now I can't be bothered!

[Iotswold]

There isn’t enough capacity to test everyone who just has flu symptoms, I read the uk labs only have capacity to process 3000 tests per day. This is why they are only asking those that have been somewhere high risk of contact and symptomatic to test.

I say this, currently in isolation awaiting testing - it’s been 2 days since I called 111, met criteria and was ‘booked in for a call back to arrange testing’. When/if I do get tested, it’s 72 hours for the results also in isolation, then even if I test negative the advice is to isolate until you are symptom free.

For all of those denied testing, what would you do differently if you were given a test? The advice is going to be the same regardless of the outcome. The reported figures for cases are almost certainly understated, but at the same time lots of people, 99% of those tested so far, have had symptoms but haven’t had covid-19, because the symptoms are the same as a number of other viruses prevalent at this time of year.

[Frustratedandworried]

There is so much conflicting info it's difficult to know what to do / when to be concerned it. I returned from Italy ( southern) on 20th feb and developed a sore throat and temp almost 2 weeks later ...it passed for a few days and now I have a dry cough and headaches but no fever. The NHS online thing says as I was in italy over 14days ago it doesnt count

[VanGoghsDog]

The NHS/PHE/ information is not conflicting. It's very clear.

The "conflict" comes from reading the press and social media.

[seasmize]

Hate to break it to you @VangoghsDog but the authorities aren’t always right. The virus has been present in Italy well beyond 14 days. It takes a month for most people to die from this and there are a lot of dead people in Italy.

[VanGoghsDog]

Being right and giving conflicting information are not the same thing.

I didn't say they were necessarily "right", but I think their advice has been clear and not conflicting. Obviously they change the advice as they know more, and we need to keep an eye on the advice.
I've not read anywhere that it takes a month to die, so perhaps you can provide something to support that claim?

[seasmize]

I've not read anywhere that it takes a month to die, so perhaps you can provide something to support that claim?

It’s been mentioned in many studies coming out of China. I’ve read it so many times I’ve honestly lost track, but from a paper I currently have open (studying 391 cases in Shenzhen) the median clinical course for recovered cases was 32 days and deaths occurred 35-44 days after symptom onset.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v1.full.pdf+html

How long it takes depend on state of care—in Wuhan at the peak of their crisis people were dying on average 18.5 days after symptom onset (remember it take 5 days on average from infection to symptoms) because they didn’t have the facilities (ventilators, ECMO) to keep everyone alive.

www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S014067362305663.pdf

[Jerseygaly]

The Italian drs.
It's approx 1w incubation but can be short or longer than 14
At which point fever ( day 7)
Cough a bit later. Maybe day 14 after contact
Then it just gets worse into breathing difficulties of it's going to
There is a chart somewhere. As I'm not sure exactly of time frame.

[YouAreTheEggManIAmTheWalrus]

DS and I last week. Had all the symptoms to a tee.

Live/work/travel on public transport in area mostly populated with international tourists mainly Chinese/Japanese.

No test done due to criteria but GP said don’t go to surgery as she can’t be sure it wasn’t cv. We self isolated just in case, mainly because we were so ill.

[TeacupDrama]

there have been 25,000 tests in UK this is not a random sample but 25,000 people who have either arrived from highly infected areas in China Iran and Italy or who have had close contact with such people only 1% have tested positive so all the rest (99%) who were tested either have a different virus or nothing this 99% were considered much much higher risk than normal but still very very few had the virus
so if it is only 1% in a high risk contact group it is going to be much much less in general population