Process for attending hospital with symptoms similar to covid

[greyinganddecaying]

My DC(6) has weak lungs (CLD) and currently has a bad cough. We don't think he has covid, just his usual winter infection, but understand that many people will assume covid under the current circumstances.

He often needs hospital treatment as bugs/infections tend to floor him, but I'm concerned that we may not be able to just show up at A&E as we have in the past.

Can anyone tell me their experience of the protocol for taking kids to hospital for things like this, that may look like covid from the outside?

I've took DC aged 2 to A&E twice in the last 3 months with a high temperature/ cough. We'd actually done PCR tests but they weren't the slightest bit interested in whether we had and they don't have separate seating areas for potential cases or anything like that. Admittedly we have a kids A&E at our local hospital so I don't know if the adults A&E would be the same.

Our local GP, however, won't let you in the door if they have any of the official Covid symptoms until their result is back.... We now preemptively take for a Covid test if we think there is a chance DC may need to see a GP in the next few days.

Completely normal in my experience except you’ll be triaged into the red zone until a covid test comes back negative.

My DD was in A&E twice over late summer & admitted on the second trip. We went to different hospitals each time as I wasn’t happy with the care at the first.

We went to A&E at both & they asked us if we had any covid symptoms. DD had a fever and so we were moved immediately into a covid waiting area or ‘red zone’. They did a swab on both of us. We had to wait about 30-45 minutes for the results at hospital no.1 and then we were moved back to the normal waiting area. In hospital no.2, the results were back in 5 minutes & we were moved back 🤷🏼‍♀️

Our GP has seen both DD’s several times with coughs & fevers. We’ve had great service thankfully. Again, we’ve had to go to the red zone at the docs but it’s never been a problem. I do have younger DD’s, 4 & 18 months so maybe they prioritise the under 5’s a bit more 🤷🏼‍♀️

They will just see him on the red side, some places have machines to do a rapid test to check if Covid too. Don't worry about taking him, they are set up for kids with Covid or other respiratory infections.

My fear would be that you have to wait in the red zone and he would be vulnerable to catching covid on top of whatever else he has.

Thanks all - we've bitten the bullet and arranged a PCR for today. This means that if he gets worse and we need to take him in, we have a recent test result to say yay/nay.