I was astonished: I’d had Covid-19 without any of the symptoms

As a child, my younger sisters used to jokingly call me “carrier monkey”. Siblings, eh? But they had a point. I had a habit of transmitting illnesses from school classmates to my family, rarely becoming unwell myself. Chickenpox? Passed to my mother when she was eight months pregnant. Shingles? Flu? All yours.

So I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to learn, as I did this week, that I’ve probably had Covid. But it has. I’m astonished.

When I walked into the Pyser testing centre at the Honourable Artillery Company in the City – set up by former JP Morgan banker Ian Hannam after his mother was unable to get a test and sadly died from the virus – I fully expected a clean bill of health. I was there out of curiosity, with a dash of narcissism. Friends have been paying for tests and dissecting the results. Many, convinced they’d had Covid after weeks in bed, have come back negative.

First came an “instant” finger prick (£48), which involved squeezing a couple of drops of my blood on to what looked like a pregnancy test and waiting for a line to appear. Rather than a simple positive or negative, you’re looking for “Igg”or IGM”. The former indicates that you have antibodies in your system and probably have had Covid at some point. The second detects whether you’re producing them right now, and could still be infectious.

The test is supposed to take 15 minutes, but a line formed almost immediately alongside “IGG”. I’d had the virus? When? For two weeks in March I’d had a cough: noticeable, yes, but not “persistent” as the NHS list of symptoms suggested it would be. Besides, I’d had zero trouble breathing, no fever and retained my senses of taste and smell.

Turns out, I’m probably one of the two-thirds of asymptomatic people identified by the ONS this week, for whom coronavirus comes and goes unnoticed. It’s a strange feeling: friends are jealous, this being one of the only medical tests I can think of where a positive result is the prize. And I feel guilty, with so many thousands of people having lost their lives, that I could have breezed through it.

I should say that the accuracy of said results remains unclear, with conflicting reports of false negatives and positives. My finger prick test was the CTK Biotech, which is apparently 99.4 per cent accurate. I also had the Public Health Englandapproved Abbott Sars-cov-2 IGG test (£96), which is still being analysed in a lab.

It may well confirm what the finger prick pointed to, but I’m not sure it matters. Turns out, a positive test result doesn’t feel like a get-out-of-lockdown-free card in the slightest. I don’t plan to ditch my mask or hug my nearest and dearest with abandon. If anything, it’s made me more aware that I could have unwittingly spread Covid – although, having been housebound for the first few weeks of lockdown, I really hope not. And, of course, I’m wondering who might have given it to me in the first place. Friends, there’s a shortlist – best get your stories straight.

I won’t be changing my behaviour. I’m still going to regard everyone else as potentially at risk, or as a risk to me – after all, as the genial gentleman at the testing centre told me, there are probably a number of other strains out there. My hands will still be scrubbed to a rendition of God Save the Queen. Frankly, I don’t feel immune to anything – least of all my own common sense.