Please only get a covid test if you have covid symptoms.

[Bluewavescrashing]

Only 3 symptoms indicate the need for covid testing.
Persistent or continuous dry cough
Fever
Loss of taste and / or smell.

If you have a cold, you do not need a covid test.
If you have a sore throat - no test.
Vomiting or stomach pain - no test.
Carry on going to work, kids to school or nursery as long as you are well enough to do so.

Please don't waste tests which are on short supply.

My DgD was sent home from school on Tuesday with a persistent cough, sore throat. Her brother and sister were also sent home
because of her being ill they are NOT ill. Told by the headmaster that none of them will be allowed back into school until she gets a negative test.
School have phoned Evey morning and afternoon to see if she has the results.
What do you do in this scenario. We thought and proven correct its just a very bad cold.
What happens when someone gets a cold again.
I do think a lot of people will get colds and flu as we have isolated through out the summer.

We don’t need to argue about this!

If you have
High temp
Continuous cough
Or loss of taste and smell

Then get a test!! However, good luck getting one for any of those 3 symptoms as there are not enough tests for them.

This ISNT the public’s fault, there is just not enough tests. Bollocks has 51% of the nation had a test without one of those symptoms in the last week. This is the goverments incompetence...not ours!

Stop blaming each other.

@Redcups64

We don’t need to argue about this!

If you have
High temp
Continuous cough
Or loss of taste and smell

Then get a test!! However, good luck getting one for any of those 3 symptoms as there are not enough tests for them.

This ISNT the public’s fault, there is just not enough tests. Bollocks has 51% of the nation had a test without one of those symptoms in the last week. This is the goverments incompetence...not ours!

Stop blaming each other.

Where does the 51% stat comes from, even at the maximum test capacity of 250k per day less than 2million could even have a test per week.

Have you misunderstood something? No one thinks that.

Honestly I still need more clarity. I kept my dd home from school one day as she was very snotty and had a cough. A cough I knew to be cold related, mucous type one. Went back to school the next day, no problem. No questions by school, head teacher agreed with me she had a cold

MN disagreed and told me she should have been tested and I was wrong to send her back. I dont regret my actions I was certain it was a cold, I have it now and theres nothing to suggest anything else

To be frank, I'd take the Govt. recommendation for testing with a grain of salt. Even so, I'd still be hesitant to get testing unless I really felt I needed it based on the following: advice from GP, WHO symptoms, Germany's symptom recommendations.
www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/coronavirus/ausbreitung-coronavirus-1730756

I find the UK govt. list far to basic.

Very interesting study regarding symptoms in children below:
www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3484

This is interesting. I’m in Australia and while the response has been different between states the one constant message is to be tested no matter how mild your symptoms. Even if you have a sniffle. We have an ad on telly where young people with cold symptoms infect an older family member who ends up in ICU!

I’ve been commuting to my city office job throughout and haven’t had a cold since February.

The lack of clarity over the cough is a problem. One of my dc has woken up early this morning with a cough. I don’t know if it’s persistent but she has a snotty nose too. Seems like normal back to school cold to me. Pre Covid I’d send her to school without a worry.
Second dc has a sore throat. We’re all getting tested. I don’t know if I’m being irresponsible and wasting resources by getting tested, or being irresponsible if I don’t get us tested!

School have sent 7 children home already this week with cold symptoms and said they can’t return without a negative test result. All have come back negative but it has meant that these children have already had 4 days off school in the process.

DS(8) has just been tested for the second time since going back to school at the end of August. First time he had a fever with no other symptoms - clear need for a test. Was negative thankfully. Second time he had a cold - the same cold as his classmates, except his was accompanied by a fever and complaints of feeling like he was 'boiling to death' (yes, he is usually that dramatic!). So I took him for a test, not because of the sniffles, but because of the high temp. The problem is, his body reacts to everything with a high temperature. This time I was more confident that the test would likely be negative and it was. Of course, that's not very scientific, just knowledge of my child's particular inclination to become feverish with every little thing. But obviously I can't not have him tested, because it could be Covid. I might as well just set up a campsite outside the test centre now and maybe enquire about some sort of frequent flyer rewards.

School have sent 7 children home already this week with cold symptoms and said they can’t return without a negative test result. All have come back negative but it has meant that these children have already had 4 days off school in the process

I’m afraid that the downside of all children back to school is, at least for now, schools sending children home for any hint of respiratory illness. And for whole bubbles to be sent home if there’s a confirmed case, We can’t have it both ways - either we lower the number of children in school so we can space them out, or we maintain very high vigilance for both suspected and confirmed cases.

Sorry to hear that employers, schools and nurseries are being difficult. At my school (and my DCs') they are following the guidance in my OP. It must be so frustrating to have to take time off unnecessarily. If you've been asked to rest in this situation can you quote the government guidance to them?

I still think that if a child has a cold with a temperature, they should be tested as a high temp is a common symptom of covid. A cold without a temperature, Persistent cough or loss of sense of taste/ smell shouldn't need a test.

All three of my children always get a cough with a cold. It’s more a case of the government hadn’t expected this huge surge in test requests after schools went back rather than people wasting tests

I have been on threads telling people to get kids tested when it's probably just a cold.

They key thing being they often mention a temperature too.

If its a temp you do need a negative test or isolate your household for 14 days.

Both my kids have got snotty noses today. But they do not have fevers and are otherwise normal so we will go about our business as normal.

@Anxiousmess01

The lack of clarity over the cough is a problem. One of my dc has woken up early this morning with a cough. I don’t know if it’s persistent but she has a snotty nose too. Seems like normal back to school cold to me. Pre Covid I’d send her to school without a worry. Second dc has a sore throat. We’re all getting tested. I don’t know if I’m being irresponsible and wasting resources by getting tested, or being irresponsible if I don’t get us tested!

School have sent 7 children home already this week with cold symptoms and said they can’t return without a negative test result. All have come back negative but it has meant that these children have already had 4 days off school in the process.

It doesn't sound like you all need to be tested, so yes you are using up resource and preventing someone with genuine symptoms being tested.

@Anxiousmess01
Sorry I think it’s irresponsible to get ALL of you tested. Not unreasonable if the poorly child couldn’t go to school without a negative test but unnecessary for all of you unless you had serious reason to believe you had covid

Well I have just been to my local Asda and they are handing them out and actively encouraging people to test ,but I'm in Bolton so.....

When we got tested we put the symptomatic dc in and then were asked if we wanted to add further family members, so we added the parents (ie us) in - we are entitled to an asymptomatic test due to jobs though but I don't think they were checking that.

Coughs an colds are v common in the autumn, so increases in demand were entirely predictable.
The fact that our Govt hasn't upped capacity to cope, is whats very worrying, not that people want a test, Johnson said daily test capacity would be 500k by October, we are doing around 170k.

This from the WHO.

Most common symptoms:
fever.
dry cough.
tiredness.

Less common symptoms:
aches and pains.
sore throat.
diarrhoea.
conjunctivitis.
headache.
loss of taste or smell.
a rash on skin, or discolouration of fingers or toes.

@lifesalongsong - I'm not talking months ago, I'm talking weeks ago. Of course change the advice as it's an ever changing picture. But communicate the change, we're not mind readers. And don't blame people for doing the wrong thing especially being over cautious when it's their failure of communication. Don't suggest this is all obvious, I'm intelligent and follow the story a lot and I manage people and I have huge gaps in my understanding which only come to light by accident. As I said useless.

The answer is that we need enough tests to be available, not for people being made to feel bad for getting tested

Indeed. Testing is the best way out of this. We need to find the asymptomatic cases as those are the biggest risk to spread..

The Zoe app only reports on the absolute symptoms of those testing positive not the combination of systems or the percentage of people with each symptom testing positive.
So what we can say is 38% of children had a sore throat but not what percentage of these also fell into the 49% who reported a fever (or the smaller percentages that reported the other testable symptoms), or what percentage of children with a sore throat tested positive compared to the percentage of children with other symptoms. If 80+% of those who test positive and reported a sore throat also reported one of the other symptoms and less than 1% who had a sore throat tested positive it would add large levels of additional testing for the detection of very few extra cases. Similarly I would expect that large numbers of children are currently reporting fatigue simply because their bodies are having to readjust to school after a lengthy period in which many of them hardly left the house which could well mean that the percentage of children with fatigue testing positive being minuscule and in many cases the fatigue being unrelated to Corona.

I've had a letter out of the blue inviting me to have a test. I'm not ill or vulnerable. My friends had the same letter.

Rogue that will be for research I guess. So a very good reason to get tested

I have to have one once a week at work.no one has symptoms. I think it's a waste of time.i could catch it day after my test but they are rules

Tell the schools that please

Started the week with one child with symptoms so isolated and ordered one test for them as per guidance now have another child and DH with symptoms and cannot get tests at all. Child 1 may test negative, but the rest of us are not allowed out until either we complete 14 days isolation, get a negative test or symptomatic people complete 10 days isolation.

In the meantime I cannot go to work on the frontline because I cannot get a test done for the symptomatic people in my household because there are not enough. This is to do with governments lack of planning for the obvious rise in numbers of tests that would be required as children returned to school in September and spread the common respiratory viruses that abound at this time of year.

I am not the only frontline worker I know in this position.