Bracing myself for test and trace….how was it for you?

[Dingleberry8]

DS1, DS2, DS3 and I all tested positive on lateral flow yesterday so dutifully had our PCR tests…there is no chance they will be negative. Now waiting for test and trace to start calling as my number went down on all the tests. Are they going to call me separately for each child or is the system sophisticated enough to realise we are all in the Samar household? I am worried I might get 4 sets of calls daily! (And feel pretty ill at the moment)…

I'm in NI and have just had one call (re DS who's positive). And a text with a code for my day 8 PCR.

When DD(6) and DH tested positive I only had the initial call for DD. Took nearly an hour, not the 25mins they said, but then had no more calls. DH filled in the online form but then had calls every 2/3 days to make sure he was still isolating and would get multiple calls if he missed them.

One very annoying phone all on day 2. Lots of box ticking and couldn’t have been less interested in close contacts. Lasted about an hour.

@hopeishere what is a “day 8 PCR”? Is that something specific to NI?

I'm not sure! We were told we had to get a PCR test when his was positive and then get another 8 days later.

Can you just say you have notified all your contacts? Waiting for pcr results but have already told everyone I have seen since Monday.

No Happy, they want chapter and verse, really annoying because I had had a really busy week at work, lots of meetings and a funeral. I didn't have most of the contacts on my personal tech. The whole process is painful when you are unwell.

What a pain! Is for the week before your positive test? Assuming my pcr today is positive.

Yes, I tested on Sunday, positive PCR early hours of Monday morning and they wanted to go back to the previous Monday.

Sorry to say that t&t were a pita for us.

Ours took ages and was a PITA. They kept calling and calling - always at impossible times, like when I was trying to fix dinner alone while feeling sick and trying to isolate my vulnerable DD from her two ill and bored brothers - and then the call took nearly an hour.

Seems really pointless when half of DS's class is positive, many of the others aren't testing, people are all going to parties and work events with few to no safety restrictions and buses are full of people coughing with no masks on. If we want to play it that way fine, but then cancel the pointless 'trace' element and spend to money to ensure we can get our tests back faster, or to prop up a bit more of the NHS. How much of our tax is being spent on this shambles?

See our call was like 10minutes. No asking about where we had been unless an event. Just wanted to know about school, sleepovers, events and if anyone had been in our house.

Done it twice now for both my kids, tbh wasn’t too bad they have a job to do. Both times they seemed pretty nice. I had it on loud speaker so could still do things. Didn’t mind googling the postcodes of places although the second caller did it for me. Have some text messages but that’s it since.

Very time consuming calls for us and an echo on the line made it difficult. The most annoying thing was we had isolated since positive LFT but they only counted the isolation days from when we got the PCRs, so isolation ended up being 12 days.

@Easternfells I had an echoey line and really struggled as I'm partially deaf.
I also had to isolate longer as it was taken from positive pcr not positive lft.

I was in the same room on Monday, as someone who tested positive on Tuesday.
On Thursday I came out of work to find 2 missed calls and 3 texts from them.....2 of the texts giving wrong information (saying I now had to isolate for 10 days). Then, Fri, 8am, I was woken by them trying to ring me again. I was not impressed.
What are they continually calling me for ?

I put my number down for all 4 of us. Had 1 call about DD(12) when she first tested positive but nothing else. No calls about DD(17) as she is apparently superhuman and immune to covid. 4 calls over 10 days for me and another 4 calls over 10 days for DH on my phone. All just to ask if we were still self isolating! What a waste of money and resources.

I just had an email

DP and DS (14) had Covid recently. For DS, they phoned me after the positive result to do all the contact stuff, and that was all I heard.
DP was able to do his contact stuff online but then had calls on days 4 and 7 to check he was still isolating.
I had assumed that the process was different for adults and children but maybe not? I have had a positive LFT and am waiting for PCR results now so we'll see...

@PlugUgly1980

Yep, they'll call you separately for each child! No way to do one after the other or fill them in simultaneously, and no online option either.

All 4 of us got the same call handler. She did say it was unusual though.

Our online forms failed to show all the details her side.

They repeatedly called our landline separately for my dh and myself during the day even though my dh was admitted into hospital and that continued for 10 days, I felt like it was harassment, it really wasn't needed while we were so unwell.

I've ignored them five times today - honestly, they can get stuffed, what good are they doing. I will continue to ignore them.

When I worked for contact tracing if someone mentioned that other family members were positive we'd either pick them out of the case queue or check if a team member had them in their queue. We could do it with one call then. We were very efficient though
If you have family members positive its always worth asking if they are able to do this.

@Northernsoullover

When I worked for contact tracing if someone mentioned that other family members were positive we'd either pick them out of the case queue or check if a team member had them in their queue. We could do it with one call then. We were very efficient though If you have family members positive its always worth asking if they are able to do this.

I wish! With a big family it is such a painful process, literally hours spent on the phone. Such a waste of everyone's time and money. It has to be done of course but it really does need to be improved.

I blocked them. I then got a call from the county council so I told him I was isolating, didn't need them calling every 2 minutes and to leave me alone - and they did. I'm an adult. I don't need this ridiculous shit.