Testing Times

This story starts with Emma unexpectedly coming home early from work yesterday. She’s a key worker at the crown court. Though there are no jury trials going on amid social distancing in the current crisis they remain open for sentencing. Somebody has to staff them.

Until yesterday that is when it was discovered that two members of staff had tested positive for coronavirus. The building was evacuated and will be closed now until Monday at least. Although the two staff members in question have been off with symptoms in recent days their diagnosis obviously increases the chances that Emma could have contracted the virus. Last night she said she thought she might be getting a bit of a sore throat as well as some aches. By this morning the sore throat had not developed but the aches persisted. Matt Hancock had announced yesterday that key workers outside the NHS were eligible for a test along with their co-habitants. So it was time for us to get a test.

Emma went online to find that we had three options in terms of testing centres we could visit. Two were in Manchester at either the airport or the Etihad Stadium while the other was in Knutsford. Not ideal if you live in St Helens especially at a time when the government don’t want people venturing far from their own localities. But this was essential. We decided that Knutsford was just about the best of those options and were given a time slot of between 1.00 and 1.30pm today.

It wasn’t that easy to find. The website claims it is on Toft Road but when we got to Toft Road we had more to do. There is some very small white signage, hastily printed no doubt, leading you to the Covid-19 test centre. It would be very easy to miss and considering the litany of problems we had with the testing process thereafter it is a small miracle that we managed to find it without missing our time slot.

When you get there two things immediately greet you. Queues and soldiers. It was extremely hot inside the car this afternoon so we had the window open on the passenger side as we approached the queue. We were barked at to close the window by one of the soldiers. He was wearing a flimsy looking mask and full military uniform. There were dozens like him, all shuffling about from car to car giving instructions to an increasingly bewildered public.

At this point the barking stops. Once inside the grounds of the centre you cannot have your window open more than just a crack. Even then that is only for brief, simple instructions. More commonly they stand next to your car window holding up a card that reads ‘please call.......’ and then a mobile number is written underneath. So you call and have a conversation on the telephone with a soldier who is six feet from your car window. I didn’t read the full instructions on the website. Emma did that. So I don’t know what happens if you don’t have your mobile phone to hand.

The first part of the conversation is about scanning. When your appointment is confirmed they send you a text message with a link on it. You are instructed to open the link which takes you to a scannable (is that a word?, Pages for the iPad seems to think so) code. You are asked to hold up the code to your car window to be scanned which is supposed to allow you to register so you can be given your testing kit. Only it doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. This is me and Emma, remember? After a few minutes twiddling with knobs and muffled whispers between soldiers our man is back on the phone. He says there is a problem with the scanner. This has been fine all day, he tells us, until now. Again, has he not heard about us?

All is not lost. There’s a phone number on a receipt card that is part of the testing kit. We can ring that number to complete our registration at home once we have taken the test. He says something about attaching a bar code to this card and I have no clue what he means because what he doesn’t explain is that within the testing kit are four stickers each with bar codes on. He says it will all become clear when we get the testing kits. He asks me to wind down the back window so his colleague can drop two testing kits on to the back seat. We are then asked to move out of the queue and park up by a hedge on the edge of what is actually just a big car park next to Knutsford Leisure Centre. He attempts to reassure me that this will not be difficult but says that if I have any questions I should put my hazard lights on. He doesn’t state the obvious by telling me not to get out of the car which is a shame because I was looking forward to the look on his face when I told him that to do so would be more trouble than it’s worth since my chair is in the boot of the car at this point.

You need a nursing degree to decipher the testing process. If we ever get back to the office I might ask some of our nursing academic staff to give me a few pointers because initially I was clueless. You get four pages of instructions where one would have done. Part of those instructions is a diagram, ambiguously labelled. It is meant to identify all the items in the testing kit so that you know exactly what to do with which item. You wouldn’t want to be downing the contents of the vial, for example, or sticking the swab in the wrong orifice. The vial looks just that - vile. Like something they used to put in the cocktails in Maloney’s when the bar men thought they were Tom Cruise. Maloney’s is still the only Irish bar I’ve ever been in where buying a pint is frowned upon.

The swab is for your nose and your throat. You only get one so it is dual purpose. The instructions are to take a swab of the throat first. There might be a medical or hygiene reason for this but if there is it is not elaborated on despite the forest-decimating amount of paper they are using. When I swab the back of my throat I gag and splutter like someone who has downed the vial or a cocktail at Maloney’s. There’s also a self consciousness that comes with having to twirl the swab around inside your nostril for 15 seconds. It’s like picking your nose but without getting your hands dirty or removing any significant bogey-age. That’s definitely not a word whatever iPad Pages says.

The swabbing is the easy bit. It’s the labelling that causes the problems. The four stickers containing bar codes are there for a reason. There is meant to be one on the vial which by now should have the used swab inside it. That’s another difficulty. The swab is too long to fit into the vial so you have to snap some of it away. It bends easily but it does not break for what feels like several months. By this time we have been here over an hour. I have had to put those hazard lights on for assistance long ago. Anyone who thinks this is like going to a McDonald’s drive-thru think again. You don’t even get a happy meal at the end of it. Eventually the swab snaps, I can now close the vial and attach one of the bar code stickers to it. Another goes on your receipt card which we have to take home. Remember, we have to ring the number on the receipt card to complete our registration. The other two labels are for the clear plastic back now containing the vial with the swab inside and a bigger grey plastic bag into which the whole lot should be placed.

Except we’ve lost the remaining bar code stickers.

I had them just a second ago. I insist several times that I have put them in the bag but Emma has emptied the contents of said bag twice and there are no bar code stickers. To borrow Hancock’s phrase the pressure is ‘ramping up’ now. The soldier is back by our window, this time on Emma’s side and he’s trying to explain to us as patiently as possible how everything should be packaged before we can leave. As the search for the missing stickers continues and gets ever more fruitless, and as we start to bake inside an air-tight hunk of metal with the sun blazing down on us - conditions that would kill a good sized dog - Emma breaks into uncontrollable laughter at the farcical nature of this scene. I’m not laughing. I’m panicking. I’m worrying that Covid-19 will be a note in human history by the time we get out of Knutsford. Or that we may never get out. Perhaps to protect the public in a time of crisis the army will be authorised to just shoot the idiot that has managed to lose the fucking sticky labels! My fear turns to anger. Anger at Emma because she just won’t stop bloody laughing. Yet the angrier I get the more she laughs. What hope is there for us?

Eventually some sort of arrangement is made. I’m barely listening to what has been suggested or agreed but Emma is writing something on the various bags and bits of paper that seem to have multiplied faster than Covid-19 itself. Finally we are set free, still debating where the bloody hell those stickers got to as I negotiate the one way system which leads back to the outside world.

We stop at a Co-op on the way home. Since there is a chance we’ll test positive there a few things we need to stock up on if we have to isolate. Emma is slightly symptomatic and more likely to be positive (we think) so I go in. As I climb off the driver’s seat into my chair I notice something under my foot. Something yellow that looks like an office sticky that you write notes on. I pick it up and turn it over. It is the remaining two white sticky labels that we had just wasted half a lifetime not to mention the military’s time and resources looking for. I had seen this at the time but hadn’t bothered to explore it any further. It was yellow and I was looking for two white sticky labels. I hadn’t noticed that the reverse was office sticky note yellow. I just get a look from Emma. She doesn’t need to say anything. She still thinks it’s funny which considering how angry I was earlier at her fit of the giggles is a result.

I go into the shop. A man in the queue turns to me and tells me he has forgotten his card and needs to go back to his car. I’m not sure why I need to know. Perhaps he’s just making conversation. After all he probably hasn’t seen anyone for six weeks. It is only when he gets back from his car and thanks me before stepping back into the queue in front of me that I realise that he was expecting me to save his place in the queue. He shapes to leave no fewer than four times to let me have my turn before on each occasion turning to grab some other essential item (a 24-pack of Carling) off the shelf.

Finally served I make my exit. On my way out I decide against using my ruck sack to carry my shopping back to the car. It’s right outside the door and I’ve only bought bread and milk, some biscuits and a six-pack of Coke. I’ll be ok, right? Wrong. The top hat is placed perfectly atop my afternoon when I drop the plastic bag sending the biscuits rolling along the shop floor as the loaf plugs at the base of my front wheel. Only the milk and the Coke stay put. Ignoring social distancing because a biff who has dropped a bag is much more important than public safety, a woman comes to my aid, scooping up the biscuits and handing them back to me with the loaf. I thank her and apologise. Wisely, she doesn’t hang around.

The results will be in in the next 48-72 hours. I fully expect mine to come back positively brain dead.