Mum’s fears after son was refused test
A FAMILY who developed coronavirus-like symptoms after a ski trip to Italy in mid-February fear they could have been “superspreaders” – after they were refused a Covid-19 test.
The Lumsdens returned from northern Italy on February 16 – three days before travellers who had been to coronavirus-hit areas were told to self-isolate as a precaution.
Mum-of-four Trish, 46, said most of her family developed symptoms.
Her youngest son, Christian, eight, had a cough and a fever on February 28. But when Trish tried to get him tested she was told by her GP it was “probably a cold”.
The family, from Currie, Edinburgh, jetted off to Venice and the Dolomites for the February half-term.
Trish and her husband, Tom, both developed symptoms, including a fever, shivers, a hangover-like headache which lasted a week and extreme fatigue which lasted for three weeks.
They kept their children off school after Stella, 13, developed a cough and Sebastian, 12, suffered a cough, fever and sore legs.
Trish said: “By the time Christian started getting a cough and a fever on the 28th, they had opened the drive-thru test centre at the Western General Hospital.
“I thought, ‘I could really be doing with getting him tested to make sure he’s not going to infect other people’. So I phoned the GP on Saturday morning.
“He said, ‘Would you be worried about him normally, if it wasn’t for coronavirus?’ I said, ‘No’, so he said, ‘It’ll just
BY PAUL RODGER be a cold then, don’t worry about it – they’re only interested if you came back from Italy since the 19th’.
“At the time I thought that sounded a bit stupid, but now I think it sounds really stupid.”
Trish had returned to work on the Royal Mile by the time she and her husband became ill.
She said: “The week after we came back was when it all kicked off, and everyone we knew was like, ‘Oh, you were in Italy – you could be carrying it’. We could have been a spreader, I don’t know.
“I would have loved to have had Christian tested and I can’t really understand why he wasn’t.
“How many other people returning to Scotland from northern Italy at this time called the NHS as they had symptoms and were told they were fine?”
Scotland’s first known case was identified on March 1 – in a patient in Tayside who had just returned from a ski trip to northern Italy.
Scientists have traced Scotland’s coronavirus outbreak to 112 unique versions of the virus imported from continental Europe.
They are unsure exactly when it first arrived but have been able to establish that community transmission was under way in February.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The approach taken to advising returning travellers from specific countries in midFebruary was agreed by the four UK chief medical officers on the best and most up-todate expert scientific and medical advice at the time.”