At Home COVID19 Testing
At the time of writing this, I am in day 11 of quarantine. I am at home, having completed my mandatory three night hotel quarantine.
From the airport I spent three nights in a government approved quarantine hotel, and received my negative test results on day 4. Having received my negative test result I proceeded home to complete my remaining quarantine days at home. As per my quarantine plan I submitted through the ArriveCAN app, I am following the mandatory quarantine at home. Read all about my hotel quarantine experience here.
Since arriving home on day 4, I have had six phone calls from various officials checking in to confirm I was adhering to quarantine protocols. I have also had two in person visits, the first from a local police officer to my front door who was checking to ensure I was at home. The second visit was from a private security company staff person also checking to ensure I was at home. The in person visits were on weekdays, and the phone calls were on both weekdays and on the weekend.
The phone calls were all live conversations with a person, with the exception of one automated phone call. The questions I have been asked include:
What was my arrival date?
Confirm my quarantine location.
Is anyone living with you who did not travel with you?
Have I had any reason to leave my quarantine location?
How have I been getting groceries and necessary supplies?
Have I had any visitors?
Did I make any stops along the way in transit from the hotel quarantine to my home?
I also had to administer an at home COVID19 test myself. The test kit was given to me at the airport before I left and I was told I had to complete it on day 10 of quarantine.
The at home COVID19 test process was very time consuming. Firstly you open the kit and read the instructions. You are prompted to register your at home test kit with Switch Health (the same company that does the airport testing). You then click to ‘Start The Test’ and await to be joined by a live in person nurse who you have a video call with. This is where it became time consuming for me. I was 1094th in the virtual line up of people to do my test. It was 3.5 hours until a nurse was able to join me live to complete my test. Once the nurse had joined me live the process took less than ten minutes to complete. Had I known it could be this long, I would have logged in and started this process earlier in the morning. I was anxious that I wouldn’t be seen in time before the office closed on the Sunday (that was my tenth day in quarantine).
Since I was at home in quarantine anyway, I was able to wait near my laptop and periodically check it a few times per hour to confirm my position in line. I was truly surprised to see the long line of people waiting to have the nurse proctor the test. Clearly there could be more nurses on hand to watch individuals do the at home test, as they know it is to be day 10 of quarantine, and know the number of kits they give out on any given day.
Once the test is complete you are prompted to select a date/time for the courier to pick up your kit. The earliest available time for me was the following day in the afternoon. I was instructed to keep my sample inside the shipping pouch in my refrigerator. Once the courier picks up the sample, it will be taken to be processed and I will be able to check my results online.
