Totally confused - DS tested positive for Covid

[Covids]

Can’t think straight and can’t understand the NHS site.

DS 17 (S6) tested positive via LFT tonight. He did a LFT this morning and nothing came up on the test stick - no lines at all. He thought it was a dud and didn’t have time to do a 2nd test as he was running late and his Dad said take another one tonight.

He came home from school with another headache (had one yesterday too apparently) and it’s positive.

I’m currently in England and am due home tomorrow - I left Scotland early Saturday morning. So we’re having phone calls galore and am getting advice from people down here but I’m sure rules are different (have been living in a relatively mask-less, embrace-everyone world for past 3 days but that’s another story)

DS has ordered up PCR tests via NHS and I think we’ll get 4 for the household? I don’t know if it’s quicker to do a drop-in clinic but then surely you can’t go if you’ve got symptoms? My DP says he’s feeling a bit rough... I’m OK so far DD is too.

DP and I are double vaccinated. We have no more lateral flows in the house. I’m travelling by train back up to Scotland tomorrow.

Does anyone know what the isolation rules are now - I’m totally confused and a little bit frazzled. And poor DS has been helping chaperone and guide new S1 pupils at his school - did he pick it up off them? Or has he passed it on to any of them? They’ve been wearing masks but maybe they’re not that effective?

Oh what a shambles I'm so sorry
It is stressful enough without all that.

I have a colleague who, along with his dw and dd got tested in Cumbernauld yesterday, they got their results this morning, said everything went very smoothly. This was after both his parents tested positive last week also in Cumbernauld. Hopefully is just a blip and you get sorted soon, while these things can happen anywhere, it must be frustrating.

What gets even more confusing about who isolates and when is it's still only those top 3 symptoms that lead to a pcr test (or a positive LFT obviously) so I'm not clear if you get a test due to other possible symptoms (headache, nausea, sore throat for example) does the family still need to isolate? I suppose so, as you'd have to lie to get the test anyway. I think teens are more likely to have different symptoms not the temp/cough/taste/smell ones.
You're really going through it OP,

I think you could just get tested as a close contact then anyway?

You can go to a test site even with symptoms or a positive test. You all need to test then if negative and one double vaxxed or under 18 are free to go out. Really you should test immediately to have the results before your train travel if tithe a close contact however I realise this was posted on Monday. Might help someone else reading though. If you weren't in contact with your ds within 48 hours of his symptoms though then you aren't actually a close contact.

liveforsummer I appreciate you’ve probably got better things to do than acquaint yourself with my previous posts but things did move on since Monday. I won’t go into the interminable details because I can’t be arsed

WeallhaveWings so jealous of your colleagues who got tested at Cumbernauld yesterday and it all went swimmingly. Perhaps they got in before the system went down or it got back up working again (119 said there was no way to contact them to ascertain if they were working again as the ‘system was down’) All I know is that at 11am a whole queue of people were sent home with PCR kits that then couldn't be processed because the packs didn’t contain the tracking labels and corresponding Royal Mail labels.

By the time my DP had done a LFT yesterday evening and tested positive (he was feeling shit so symptoms-a-plenty) he wasn’t going to do a half-hour drive to Cumbernauld on the off-chance it might be open. He’s double vaccinated and feels worse today but will be driving himself and our kids to Glasgow Airport where this morning I managed to book a test slot for this afternoon.

It’s great that my daughter (who has no symptoms and tested negative on her LFT yesterday) has to sit in a car with her Covid-ridden brother and father in order to get a PCR test so she can potentially go back to school on Monday. By which time she’ll have probably caught it off her brother and father. The postal PCRs that we ordered on Monday have yet to arrive.

Anyway I would heartily recommend booking your drive-through test by PHONING 119. Doing it this way I could request that we NOT be sent to Cumbernauld - she asked me if Glasgow Airport was OK? And I could have cried and said ‘of course it is! Why the fuck wasn’t that offered to us on Monday when we were attempting to book online??!!’ But I didn’t say that.

So hopefully everything will go swimmingly this afternoon. I’m slightly concerned that the 119 phone person said that both my DP’s and DD’s CHI numbers were ‘not recognised’ - was I sure I had the right numbers she asked? I just said ‘no your NHS system is just obviously broken’!

The only bright side of all this is that my DS feels fine and just has a wee cough every now and again. I’m keeping everything crossed that my DP doesn’t get any worse than he is.

And breathe...

OK - at 6.02 this morning I got PCR results back for my DP and DS from yesterday’s drive-through test. They’ve both already had positive LFTs and are obviously ill with coughs, headaches, runny noses, aching bodies and loss of taste. Unsurprisingly, their PCRs are positive. As expected.

But as for their DS, who was in the car at the drive-through and was tested at exactly the same time - NOTHING. No results. She has no symptoms and is under 16. I’ve had an email with the results of her DB’s and her DF’s results plus a text with just her DB’s.

We’ve kept her off school since her brother tested positive via LFT on Monday. We thought that once we got a (hopefully) negative PCR she could go back to school because a) she has no symptoms and b) she’s under 16.

However the NHS advice is all so contradictory - I’ve attached a selection of the advice about self-isolation to demonstrate the total confusion.

In certain sections it says:
‘Close contacts should book a test as soon as possible and self-isolate while waiting for the result’

In another part of the NHS website it says:

‘When you do not need to self-isolate:
If someone you live with has tested positive for Covid-19 or has symptoms of Covid 19, you will not need to self-isolate if any of the following apply:”

It then goes on to specify several exemptions including:
“You’re under 18 years, 6 months old”

And in another section headed ‘If someone you live with tests positive, your self-isolation period includes the day their symptoms started (or the day they had the test if they do not have symptoms) and the next 10 full days.”

I was under the impression that if she tested negative via the PCR, she could go back to school if she didn’t have symptoms and because she’s under 16. But now I’m not so sure.

But more importantly, where is her fecking PCR result

It is confusing @Covids but MY understanding ( having had to look at it this week) is rules now are-

If household member tests positive then rest of household books pcr test and isolates until get results.
If negative then can end isolation and carry on as normal IF double jagged +2 weeks or if under 18

Yes that could a correct interpretation and it’s what I was working on until I did more research today to get absolute clarification. And then got confused.

It’s what makes it all the more frustrating that it’s only her results that haven’t come through. If it’s negative she can go in. She’s doing another LFT as I speak. But I really need her PCR result to confidently send her into school today unless I heed the advice on the NHS site that says she just needs to be symptomless and under 16. Decisions decisions. I’m going to phone 119 to see if they can give me her results...

...so I just called 119 to chase my DD’s result - got through to someone. The line was appalling in an almost comedic way. Every time the operator said anything, it repeated it on a loop three times. At first I thought the operator had a terrible stammer but then realised that it wasn’t. So she said: ‘We cannot chase, We cannot chase, We cannot chase, LINE BREAKS TO SILENCE FOR 2 seconds ... ‘Hours’. ME: Sorry the line is terrible it sounds like you’re repeating yourself : OPERATOR: ‘I’m sorry that, I’m sorry that, I’m sorry that...

I persevere to see if I can piece together a complete sentence (whilst losing the will to live) I eventually gather I have to wait 72 hours from a test before chasing.

I also manage to hear ‘It’s my first day, it’s my first day, it’s my first day...’ and that ‘we’re having internet problems‘ x 3 No shit sherlock!

I ended up laughing and telling her that I hope the phone call is recorded and that it’s absolutely not her fault but Jesus will someone give me a break here.

My poor symptomless DD is desperate to get back to school and is raging that her DB and DF have got their results when it was bloody obvious that we were already pretty much certain they have Covid.

She’s doing another LFT (her 2nd since Monday) - if it’s negative I might send her in.

So she tested negative on her LFT this morning and I sent her to school with the image on her phone and a screenshot of the NHS advice that says you don’t have to isolate in a positive household if you’re under 18 and 6 months and don’t have symptoms.

Her PCR results just came in Negative (8 hrs after her brother and Dad’s positive results - so they obviously prioritise informing the Positive cases?)

I’m going to do another LFT tomorrow as I’m going into hospital for an appointment - otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered unless I got any symptoms.

Only another 6 days sleeping downstairs on the sofa for me...

I would not be 100% that the hospital will see you if you have household positive cases. I know that is not what the rules say but I'm pretty sure hospitals operate their own. I think what I actually heard was that staff would still have to isolate if household member positive, so not sure on patients. This may all be tosh.

Misstressgigi I thought if I’d done a LFT that morning and I had a negative PCR on Tuesday it wouldn’t be a problem but I’ll do the LFT tomorrow morning and take it from there. If it’s positive then obviously I’d cancel and if it’s negative I might give them a call. It’s a long bus journey to the hospital (Family driver is out of action with Covid) so I’d hate to be told they couldn’t see me once I’d got there.

Sorry I'm maybe worrying you unnecessarily OP.

No not at all Mistress thanks for flagging up the possibility forewarned is forearmed!