Covid - all the symptoms, negative test

[Whenwillsummerarrive]

Has anybody experienced having all the Covid symptoms, high temp, cough, breathlessness - but tested negative, multiple times? How reliable are the tests?

Yes! I was admitted to hospital in December at 22 weeks pregnant. Doctor in A&E said text book covid symptoms, my heart rate was through the roof, couldn’t speak without getting out of breath. Horrible cough. Change in smell.
Negative test.

More likely that it's one of a multitude of other circulating viruses than numerous false negatives...

Are you doing lateral flow or PCR tests?

Mine was a negative PCR.

Are you doing lateral flow or PCR tests?

Both.

Go by the pcr tests - if symptomatic you don't use the lateral flows (I've known loads of symptomatic people get false negatives on them recently )

There are other illnesses other than Covid….

There's a lot of other viruses going around at the moment.

The false negative rate is about 30% even for PCR tests.

Ignore all the LFT results.

How many PCRs have you done, and was it towards the onset of symptoms?

User error is the other possibility. If your technique is poor, you might never get a reliable result - you could always test negative if you are not getting enough on the swab from the right places.

I suspect that's me - I had a mild set of symptoms last year (when covid really was the only thing around) but still tested negative

UnmentionedElephantDildo there has never been a time when Covid really was the only thing around .

OP you probably have one of the myriad other viruses/illnesses which are always circulating/cropping up.

Both my children are poorly with cold, coughs, sore throats, high temperatures and they have both had PCRs and daily lfts there is a definitely another nasty virus doing the rounds!!

Yes, I had a shitty cold a few weeks ago.

No breathlessness but everything else. Did a PCR test which came back negative. Was quite shocked and wasn’t convinced so did another - negative again.

Several friends are having a moan about the same sort of bug - all have had negative tests.

DD did, it was a chest infection caused by a different virus.

Yep, oh has this now. We were convinced he had Covid but he had a negative PCR yesterday.

It was actually a while ago, during the second wave. Ended up in hospital for one night because oxygen levels were so low. All tests they did were negative. It’s just so strange - never been ill like that before. Seems too much of a coincidence to not have been Covid - just wondered if anyone else had this experience.