Like so many individuals struggling to navigate the U.S. health care system in current weeks, I’ve had to deal with contradictory recommendation, misinformation, misunderstandings and a suffocating paperwork struggling to take duty for anything.
On Thursday, March 5, I began my very own odyssey making an attempt to find out if I, too, had contracted COVID-19. In some methods, I was lucky, as I truly managed to get tested for the illness. As a journalist and researcher who screens social media for COVID-19 rumors and disinformation, I’ve seen numerous first-person examples of individuals fearful about their incapability to get tested, stymied by dead-end telephone numbers and contradictory recommendation. While I personally managed to leap this hurdle and get tested, learning the outcomes of that check would show to a troubling ordeal in its own right, and the start of what I might ultimately describe on Twitter as my personal #covid19purgatory.
Two weeks previous to getting tested, I’d struggled with a nagging cough, shortness of breath and a low-grade fever. I made an appointment to go to an area nurse practitioner, who was involved about the truth that I had crossed paths with a person who had lately traveled to the U.S. from a COVID-19 hotspot. She contacted the emergency room at Howard County Common Hospital, about halfway between Washington DC and Baltimore, which advised me to go to instantly.
Upon arrival at the hospital parking zone, I had my consumption completed over the telephone while I sat in my automotive. A nurse then instructed me to walk straight via the ready room into the ER itself, where that they had set up an isolation room for me. A surgical mask overlaying my mouth, I cruised inside, as employees had cleared a path so nobody must interact with me until I used to be correctly secured.
I spent the subsequent 11 hours at the ER getting tested for multiple contagions. A physician sporting a respiration apparatus over his head and chest not in contrast to a Star Wars imperial guard—though helpfully, not an ominous crimson pink—informed me that they might solely check me for COVID-19 if they ruled out the whole lot else, including strains of influenza and extra widespread kinds of coronavirus, which might take many hours to process. The expertise was simultaneously surreal and uninteresting, wanting by means of a partial glass door as most individuals strenuously prevented my room, which had been marked with a large purple cease signal. (Though one individual with my medical insurance paperwork paid no heed to the warning, getting into my room and not using a mask, only to return with one after which flee, cursing as she realized I used to be suspected of having COVID-19.)
Later that night, a nurse took two specimens from me—a throat swap and a nasal swab, the latter shoved thus far up my nose it felt like I had just snorted wasabi. She informed me they might send the 2 specimens to Maryland’s public health division for COVID-19 testing, which might take as a lot as 48 hours. I used to be then informed to go house and await the results. Back at house, I observed the paperwork did not supply me with a strategy to monitor my testing, nor did it provide me with some extent of contact for my outcomes—just the regular boilerplate text on how you can phone the ER if I had any basic questions.
The subsequent morning, March 6, my spouse and I decided to maintain our two youngsters residence from faculty for the day, as we might obtain the results a while on Saturday, and it wasn’t value putting anyone else at risk. But the weekend handed without resolution. The president, throughout a visit to the CDC in Atlanta on Thursday, had stated, “Anyone that desires a check can get a check. That’s what the bottom line is. … And the checks are all good.” I used to be about to study simply how imperfect they have been.
Once I didn’t hear from the state well being department, I began making my own calls, making an attempt to succeed in anybody who may need my outcomes. An epidemiologist within the state health department advised me to call the county well being division or the ER. The ER directed me again to the state and county health departments. The county health department wasn’t positive who would get the results.
Late Sunday, March eight, I heard from an outbreak investigator at the county well being division. She had discovered that solely one among my two specimens had been sent in for testing, despite a two-specimen protocol; the opposite was still sitting in an ER refrigerator. She advised me she’d organize for my second specimen to be sent to the state lab first thing Monday morning, though the lab in all probability wouldn’t expedite it, which meant my outcomes would take until no less than Tuesday or Wednesday. The 48-hour clock had been reset to zero.
In the meantime, past the confines of my home, the state of affairs around the country started to spiral downward: stock markets swooning, event cancellations, individuals freaking out over Tom Hanks and his spouse Rita Wilson testing constructive. Elsewhere, other nations reminiscent of South Korea had settled into a rhythm, capable of testing hundreds of individuals per day. Here in the U.S.? Extra tales of people getting turned away from getting tested.
The waiting continued. My youngsters—a 13-year-old woman and an 11-year-old boy—stayed house from faculty, stressed not understanding once I’d receive my check results. I’d been very open with them about what was happening, but the thing that upset them probably the most was no one giving me a straight answer about my COVID-19 check. How might this be occurring, they might ask.
At one level I checked with the ER for an replace, and a nurse advised me my coronavirus check had come out damaging the earlier Thursday. This didn’t make much sense to me, so I conferred once more with the county health department investigator, who concluded the nurse was mistakenly referring to checks for other coronavirus varieties I took during my hospital go to quite than COVID-19 particularly.
In other phrases, if I hadn’t sensed something was improper with the analysis, I might’ve taken the nurse’s declaration as a unfavorable outcome and strolled out of my house, regardless of the very fact the most necessary check results hadn’t truly been completed. Who is aware of how many people I may need by chance exposed if I turned out to have COVID-19?
I stayed at residence, and the extra 48 hours came and went. On Wednesday night time, the identical night time the president addressed the nation from the Oval Workplace, I revealed a Twitter thread about my #covid19purgatory, which itself went viral, ultimately accumulating greater than 11,000 retweets and 24,000 likes. While my thread didn’t velocity up getting the results—I might have to attend till mid-day Thursday, one full week after getting tested—it definitely obtained the hospital’s attention, with multiple senior administrators reaching out to apologize and talk about the many issues that had gone fallacious.
I advised the administrators I used to be less concerned about my very own well being—my symptoms have been comparatively delicate—than I used to be about how my experience could possibly be a troubling sign of issues to return. Little question the variety of COVID-19 instances would explode exponentially, I reasoned, with every potential case representing a person not understanding in the event that they have been sick or not.
In a best-case state of affairs, every individual would have a single level of contact to trace their results, whether or not it was by way of an internet site, textual content message, or even a toll-free quantity. In a best-case state of affairs, they’d have the COVID-19 equal of a FedEx tracking quantity that may estimate how long it will be until they acquired the results, the situation of their specimens and their status. In a best-case state of affairs, potential COVID-19 patients might plan accordingly, for themselves, their households, their locations of employment, their faculties and for anyone else that may probably be impacted by a constructive check outcome.
In a best-case state of affairs.
Up to now, this best-case state of affairs doesn’t exist at scale. For the overwhelming majority of potential COVID-19 patients in the U.S., there is no one level of contact, no tracking quantity, no monitoring system to help them make better-informed selections. There isn't a government web site, or one created by Google, regardless of President Trump’s insistence that one was in improvement. As an alternative, we now have a free-for-all by which anybody nervous about themselves, their households and their communities must deal with an opaque, confused system that isn't prepared to maintain them knowledgeable.
After seven days, I obtained my results. Once I first took the check, the instances in the U.S. have been estimated at 300. By the time I obtained my outcomes back that quantity had greater than tripled. And it has tripled once more as of Sunday. My COVID-19 check got here again unfavourable. So that’s one individual they will verify off the listing. Now, what about everybody else?
Src: Opinion | I Got the Coronavirus Test. My Ordeal Was Just Beginning.
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