Should I book a pcr for tomorrow?

[SummersBreeze]

I have a close contact who had a cold the week before last from Wednesday onwards. She was taking lft but they were negative. Over the weekend she got a faint positive. I was still exposed on the Monday.

Tuesday night I came down with a tender throat. That stayed with me on and off since then. Thursday - more symptoms - phelym and cough and low grade fever. A few more mild symptoms on Friday - sore ears.

I continued testing throughout all of these days but all my tests at home have been negative.

It feels like my cough is a little harder today. I can't get through a meal without coughing. It's hard to describe.

I read various threads here on Mumsnet and pcr has been recommended.

Should I be booking one for tomorrow - just to rule covid in or out?

This day 5 of symptoms by the way.

I work for a medical professional and she recommended not to pcr and rely on the home antigen tests. I think maybe she is afraid that pcr might give a covid result and I might need to be off for more time until symptoms clear.

You have an official symptom (new cough), the guidance is to book a PCR test.

Yes, PCR tomorrow. My husband tested negative on LFT but positive on PCR. You’ve got symptoms.

That sounds like Covid to me. It seems to be a thing with BA.2 version of omicron that LFT don’t always seem to pick up . Have you tried throat swabbing rather than just nose swab . I picked mine up via throat and even so the lien at first was super feint. Out of curiosity I did nose only as well - it was day 3/4 before that went faintly positive . PCR confirmed Covid.

I didn’t test positive on lft until day 4 of symptoms, I would have got a PCR test done, but knew I probably had it as all 3 family members had the same symptoms.