Nasal appraisal raises questions about Covid health response
THE eyewatering experience of a Covid19 swab directed my meandering mind to nasal events past.
Specifically, the wow factor of the girl at boarding school whose party trick was to put a handkerchief up one nostril and bring it out the other.
This was no sleight of hand. Her nasal septum had eroded, leaving a hole through which she could thread the handkerchief.
Googling what might have caused that is eyewatering too — everything from cocaine use and excessive nosepicking to trauma, cancer and syphilis.
No matter what caused it (I could imagine her trying to increase the shock factor by telling us it was cocaine or even syphilis, but we were deprived of Google then) she was told not to keep doing the handkerchief thing because it could make it worse. She ignored that advice.
There was something about such recklessness the teenage me envied.
Any recklessness I might have had once has all but ground to a halt. Hence, my nasal pharyngeal swab.
I had developed a persistent dry cough, like an old draught horse who had inhaled its chaff, accompanied by unusual lethargy (hard to tell, I know, in someone whose natural state emulates that of a lazy slug).
Sans thermometer, I had no way of knowing if I had a temperature at any stage.
Could it have been deliria during the buildup to seeking a test which convinced me I could be a superspreader? I had spent a night in Queenstown, visited a resthome in Dunedin, watched a hockey game in a packed lounge at the turf . . . Where would it end if I did have the disease? Would my diary records of where I had been and when be sufficient?
When my irritating coughing saw me banned to the spare room, I thought it was time to seek a test.
I followed the advice of first contacting my GP. His receptionist gave me the relevant 0800 number. Identification was made easy by me having my National Health Index number at the ready and, unlike some reports we are still hearing, there was no suggestion I would not be offered a test. An appointment was made for me that day.
It was slightly exciting being asked to go down an alleyway beside the testing centre and phone in to announce my arrival. I was then masked and let in through a black door without a handle. So secret squirrel.
After the test was completed, it was suggested I stay home if I felt ill, and I was told I should hear the result the next day.
As it turned out, my result did not surface until two days later.
In the meantime, I was not sure what I should be doing. I did not feel ill. I stayed at home, although when I eventually found the information about isolating in the midst of the Ministry of Health information, I realised I did not meet the requirements for selfisolation.
I received my result by text message, but someone else in my community waited a week for a result and in the end phoned her GP to get it. She also ended up making four phone calls in her quest to organise a test. A lesser person might have given up.
Official information on the timing of test result returns is varied, which is not helpful.
In one section it tells us the result is usually available in 24 to 48 hours depending on how quickly the sample can be transported to the lab and how busy the lab is, but in another section it says we should allow up to four days from swabbing to receive the result and, when it is particularly busy, it could take up to five days. After five days they suggest you contact your GP or the place the swab was done.
All these months into this testing regime, isn’t it time the system was consistent and a bit slicker than that?
Until now the quality control approach seems to have been to wait until a loophole is exposed, play it down first and then slap a BandAid on it.
Now Chris Hipkins has been relieved of his wider health portfolio duties to concentrate on the Covid19 response, perhaps it is a good time to run a finetooth comb over every aspect of the health response, including the official information, to see what is working well and what could be done better. Such a review should go wider than those who have been providing official advice to date.
In the meantime, I have renewed admiration, respect and sympathy for workers who must endure regular nasal swabs.
I hope there is a concerted search for an accurate alternative which is less unpleasant.