Anyone else been invited to the ONS Covid Infection Survey?

[Titsywoo]

Our household has been invited to join this survey. Somebody comes to our house once a week for 4 weeks then once a month for the next 11 months and we have to do a swab test for every family member who wants to take part. We get vouchers for every visit for each person who takes a test. Me and DS are going to do it (DH and DD aren't happy to do the swab in the throat so have declined). Apparently 11,000 homes have been chosen to start and they will add another 200,000 or so over the next year. The voucher amounts are quite generous!

Yes we're doing it too. Nice man comes round, we get a test and a few questions and overall we'll get £850 from it!

I'm surprised your dd and dh have declined given that would be another £850 if they both do it.
The swab is no more unpleasent than swallowing a pill imo

We are doing it, on our 5th week now. It's been fantastic since lost my job due to covid so the vouchers are really handy. And of course it's nice to be able to make a contribution.

My 2 small children are doing it too - they know they get vouchers for it, but it's completely their choice. We're all quite used to it now. They only do the nose though.

Me! I'm doing it but I'm not making 7yo DS do it as he doesn't want to.

Yes, we're doing it too. It's fine and the vouchers started appearing via email after a couple of weeks. It's brilliant!

@Wwydiywm

I'm surprised your dd and dh have declined given that would be another £850 if they both do it. The swab is no more unpleasent than swallowing a pill imo

I know but basically everyone in my family except me is on the autistic spectrum and has a lot of sensory issues. Although funnily enough DS is the only one officially diagnosed and he is willing to tolerate the discomfort but he loves money!

I have said 3 of us will do it when I registered so dd has time to change her mind! Is it just the nose for everyone or is that a special case?

We've just been asked to do it, and DH and I are both signed up. I phoned the initial sign up number, and it will take up to 4 weeks for them to get back to us with a date for first visit. No rush then!

I'd be interested to know how households were chosen.

Oh, can someone tell me where the vouchers are for please?

@FuzzyPuffling

Huge range of retailers, including amazon, Tesco, restaurants, clothes shops etc.

We had our first swab/ meeting on Saturday. Takes a while for them to be emailed apparently.

@FuzzyPuffling

We are taking part. We were due to do week 3 swabs yesterday but apparently they had a data issue, we called the researcher and apparently he'd been sent to a house that had done the tests 20 minutes earlier but our visit hadn't been organised!

Nice to feel we're doing something and DH just been made redundant so vouchers handy. Our kids were given option and wanted the money. Huge incentive when you're 10 & 12 and your parents are tight with pocket money.

We're using vouchers at Sainsburys. Actually dh and the kids voucher codes came through but not mine, need to chase it up

@wonderstuff do you get your results direct at all? I know they say it’ll be available via your GP, but I really don’t want to bother them each week/ month (especially as I very much doubt they’ll know about the study anyway!)

We were told no news is good news, they'll text positive results but not negative ones. Got a letter informing us of negative results about 10 days after first swab, not had any news on second test which was 8 days ago.

Thank you!

Have been doing since September. Now on monthly readings
But concerned as had our first letter with.our results. Mine was negative. OH was test failure, so inconclusive. Noticed OH year of birth reference is wrong wondering whether his data mixed up with someone elses.Have tried to call ON S but can never get through!