Becoming a statistic: My COVID-19 scare in New Zealand

The site has been a little light on content for the past few days. Mainly because I have been extremely ill. As my regular readers will know I came to New Zealand to weather the coronavirus storm and, as would be expected with so many closed borders around the world, it is in New Zealand that I remain.

On Tuesday morning I woke up feeling like hell. I had a headache, I was mildly febrile and I had an extremely congested chest. The advice here is, should you appear to display symptoms of COVID-19 (as I was) you are to ring a dedicated free call number (which I did). After a 10 minute consultation with the operator, I was referred to a nurse for further investigation.

The nurse called me back about 90 minutes after I rang off from the initial telephone call. He then took me through a similar questionnaire and decided that yes, I should be referred for a COVID-19 test in order to ensure that I was not stricken with the virus.

I had been locked down for nearly two full weeks already at this stage and, as a diabetic, was being extraordinarily careful so I had my doubts. I was given a third number to call and advised that the staff manning those lines would duly book me in for a test.

It then took the entire day of back and forth, both myself and the person I share a house with at the moment, to get that test to occur at our local testing center. As a nomad who lives out of a suitcase things like vehicle ownership and driver’s licenses are well down my list of priorities so I would not have been able to attend the original test without endangering others if I was positive. We finally got this done.

The test was booked for 2 pm on Wednesday. About an hour before I was preparing to leave the house to head to the testing station my telephone went off. A voice on the other end of the line said that she was a district nurse and would be coming to me as a result of my lack of transport. It’s important to note that this could’ve been organized the previous day, however, some sense having at last prevailed.

The nurses were wonderful at every step of the process. They kept me well informed of what to expect, although the reality of a swab going that far up your nostril is a little hard to prepare for, and conducted themselves with utmost professionalism and politeness. They then advised me, as had all of the people who I had previously spoken to as a part of this process, that I would need to isolate away from the rest of the household until the results came back.

Then we hit another minor snag. After a nearly-two-day delay in getting tested in the first instance I was then advised that no results would be given out during the Easter long weekend. This is four days in New Zealand. I was a little shocked that medics were apparently taking a holiday in the middle of a global pandemic and it also left me with no chance of a result until six days after I had first contacted the health authorities.

Today it is Friday and I am feeling far better than I have all week. Myself and those I share space with now have a dilemma. Break the strict quarantine or wait? I will, of course, err on the side of caution. I fully anticipate a negative result but, aside from anything else, not following medical advice in this new normal can result in punitive punishment. Also, on the off-chance that I am infected, I would hate to be the one responsible for making anyone else sick.

Even as New Zealand’s leader is internationally celebrated for her response to this crisis it seems that, on the ground, the cracks are showing. Considering that Ardern and her administration are currently calling victory against the virus after fourteen days, I wonder what impact a six-day turn around on results, like mine, would have if it was (and I can only assume it has been) replicated in other cases?

Originally published at https://davebramovich.com on April 9, 2020.