Physician slams six-day wait for test results
A family physician in Langley says six days is too long to wait to find out she tested negative for the novel coronavirus.
Dr. Rae Dalzell said she thinks all hospitals should be equipped to test for the virus so people can get results as quickly as possible.
Dalzell, who works in the Fraser Health Authority, emphasized she was speaking for herself as a doctor and as a patient, not on behalf of any public health body.
“We in the valley shouldn’t have to send off our swab to Vancouver, to have this long wait time to get the testing done,” she said Wednesday.
“In Vancouver Coastal Health, they can get the swab in 24 hours at times. Whereas here, it’s six days. That doesn’t make any sense.
“It’s a frustrating experience to know that this a very time-sensitive virus, and yet we aren’t having a system that supports that.”
Dalzell declined to name the hospital or nursing homes where she works.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said Wednesday there are now five locations around B.C. where they’re testing for coronavirus.
In late February, about 1,000 people had been tested.
By the first week of March, that number had risen to 2,000.
By last Friday, 6,225 had been tested.
Exact numbers will be released on Friday, but he expected the total number of tests to be more than 17,000 by then.
“Our testing has become more strategic,” Dix said at a daily briefing in Vancouver. “We’re doing more and more of it, and more and more of it is necessary.”
On March 10, Dalzell was told someone she saw on March 8 had tested positive for COVID-19.
She heard the news informally from a co-worker.
On the day she found out about her COVID-19 exposure, she had visited several nursing homes and seen many patients.
“The information kind of stopped me in my tracks and put the brakes on everything,” she said. “I went home and stayed put.”
By 9:30 p.m. on March 10, she was officially told to go into quarantine for 14 days. She wasn’t presenting any symptoms.
The next day, she and her husband and their three children developed a mild, flu-like fever and chills. At that point she was told she needed to be tested, and that getting results would take three to four days.
On March 18, six days after being tested, her doctor told her she and her husband were negative.
“I recognize that everybody is doing their best right now and the system is completely overwhelmed with the number of swabs,” she said. “Truly, I think we can be doing a better job than this.”
She said her experience highlights “how little we should be basing on the swabs and how much more focusing on self-isolation and social distancing.”
Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s public health officer, has said that people who don’t show any symptoms don’t need to be tested. Testing is being focused on health care staff, long-term care homes, and anyone linked to existing outbreaks.
Research indicates that the sickest people are the most infectious.