Testing, testing

The other day I did something different. Something that thousands of people all over the world have been doing every day for the past 12 months, but was nevertheless new to me.

I took a COVID test.

 

I haven’t had any symptoms and it would have been pretty annoying if I had, seeing as I’ve been more or less self-isolating since December 2020. But I was picked at random to take part in an Imperial College trial to help them assess transmission levels.

 

I’ve never really fancied doing one of those tests. I have no desire to rediscover my tonsils, or to find out exactly how far up my nostrils go. But in the global fight against the pandemic it seemed like the least I could do.

 

But now that I’ve done it, I can’t help wondering how accurate these tests are. Not because of any conspiracy theories or an innate scepticism about the abilities of the scientists who develop these tests.

 

No, it’s the fallibility of people like me that I’m concerned about.

 

My self-swab kit came in six parts, none of which could be touched before I’d washed my hands for 20 seconds. There was a biohazard bag, a security seal, a long swab, stickers, a booklet and a flat-pack box in which to return the completed test.

 

The instructions could hardly have been clearer. But they still managed to send me into the kind of panic I associate with long official forms or people trying to show me how to do a badminton trick shot.

 

How was I supposed to prevent the swab from touching anything else if I couldn’t put it down anywhere? What would happen if I couldn’t find my tonsils? And how on earth was I going to put together the flat-pack box?

 

Turns out I’m perfectly capable of sticking an elongated Q-tip up my nose and rotating it, though it immediately made me want to sneeze. But the throat test was another matter because my tongue seemed to have a life of its own and kept darting out and rejecting the swab. So it’s unlikely that I ever managed to find my tonsils.

 

I’m quite a conscientious person and I’d actually practised the throat test with a Q-tip the day before the test to try to get it right. I’d also watched the demonstration video closely and studied the flat pack box from every angle.

 

But I still found the whole thing difficult and stressful, and was delighted when I received my “Negative” result because what I’d actually been dreading was a: “Call that a sample?” response.