Thought of the Day - June 2 - Testing, Testing. Check 1 . . . 2.

A friend had COVID-19 symptoms and thus got tested I asked him to describe what it was like for the blog:

After having a fever of 38.2°C in the evening, I decided that I should go get tested and so I called 811. They told me that there was a COVID-19 drive-through testing centre up at Boundary Road in the Central Park parking lot between Kingsway and Imperial (or 49th if you’re on the Vancouver side). The hours of the centre were 12 to 6, 7 days a week.

The next day, a typical rainy spring BC day, I drove up at around 12:30pm. It was the day after I had noticed my fever. I drove along Imperial towards Vancouver and turned right on Boundary. I saw some signage where the parking lot exit used to be and then some more close to the entrance. It was well marked. The parking lot was laid out so that cars have to snake around. As you enter from Boundary you turn right and then right again towards the first tent station. There were two cars ahead of me and it took maybe five minutes at the most to get to the first person that I needed to talk to.

He was in a full-body protective suit and had a mask and face shield on. I was instructed to roll down my window only an inch when I was talking with him. He also said that I should turn off my car when I got inside the tents where they were doing the testing; the explanation was that it got loud inside the tents. He gave me two information sheets and told me to go in one of two lines of cars. wait for further instructions from one of his colleagues. I waited a few minutes and gradually moved up the line.

It turned out that the two lines were for health practitioners and ordinary citizens. It probably took 10-15 minutes to talk to another person who was arranging where which cars would go in which line. They probably then took another 5 to 10 minutes for the person who took my medical card information, asked my birth date and verified my doctor’s name. Shortly after that I drove into the first one of the tents. There I talked to someone who verified who I was and created labels for my test kit. After leaving the tent, someone came up put the Testkit on my front windshield, underneath my wiper. As I started the car the windshield wiper that my Testkit had been put on the windshield went back-and-forth with the windshield wiper much to my chagrin. Normally I would’ve gotten out of the car to see if it was damaged once I turned off my wipers. But in this case, I stayed in the car and waited for the testers to condemn me.

The next tent was the actual test and the testers asked me to roll down my window completely and asked me a few questions about how I was feeling and then proceeded to give me the test. This involves having them put an alien probe up a nostril that I thought ended at a certain point. Clearly, that was not the case and I’m still recovering from the trauma of having a swab go up close to what it seemed to have been my eye. I joke, of course, as the people doing the procedure were very gentle and although uncomfortable, the swabbing made no lasting impact on my nasal cavity and everything felt normal once the procedure was done.

For those that are wondering, he came back negative.

Cheers

Cliff