Drive yourself to the hospital if you can. Park outside Accident & Emergency, but don’t get out of your car. Call us on arrival and a nurse will find you.
Those were the instructions I was given when I went to the Whittington hospital in north London on Tuesday night.
I’ve made more than my fair share of visits to hospitals in the past few years. I’ve had more tests than I care to remember but I’ve experienced nothing like I did a few hours after stepping off a plane from the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
A nurse protected by a plastic face shield, thicker-than-normal rubber gloves and wearing a disposable plastic uniform, checked my pulse, blood pressure and oxygen levels. I’ve had this done many many times but never before have I had them checked through the car window with me sitting behind the wheel.
I’ve had more tests than I care to remember but I’ve experienced nothing like I did a few hours after stepping off a plane from the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi
She then used what looked like a giant cotton bud to take a swab from the back of my mouth and inside my nose. ‘You’ll know the results within 48 hours,’ I was told – the results that will reveal whether I have coronavirus or, more precisely, COVID-19.
I should say that not everyone will have to submit to the rather surreal experience I have described, as the NHS is piloting the use of home-testing, with nurses, paramedics and other staff visiting people with symptoms in their own homes.
I hope and believe that I haven’t got the dreaded virus. So do my doctors. I’ve not visited an area where there are cases, do not feel unwell, have had no fever and no problems breathing. I do, though, have a cough.
New official advice issued on the day I flew back from holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia said that anyone coming home from those countries (plus a string of others), who was showing a symptom of COVID-19 should call 111, prepare to be tested and isolate themselves at home until the results are known. I’m now waiting.
Lucky you, you might think, you’ve just extended your holiday by two days. I’ve been overwhelmed with suggestions of movies to catch up on and books to read.
I was looking forward to making a start yesterday until I realised that I hadn’t read the leaflet I’d been given the night before when I was too tired to care. Do not go to work, public areas or use public transport, it informs me. So far so predictable. Don’t use the same towels as your family or the same bathroom (if you’re lucky enough to have two).
Don’t use the same bedroom as anyone else. Do not throw out any rubbish. On and on it goes. All a reminder that this is deadly serious. Not for me but for those we want to protect – those for whom catching COVID 19 won’t be, at best, a few days off work and, at worst, a nasty bug.
The advice we get is easy to question and to mock. This week the Government faced accusations of giving out confusing and contradictory information – should we travel to northern Italy or not? Will schools have to close or not?
Coronavirus Assessment Booth set up outside Whittington Hospital, London, February 12
My programme – and others – could fill the airwaves with anxious travellers and parents complaining that ‘we’re not being told’ what we need to know. That is understandable but all too often unfair. What governments and public health professionals here and elsewhere are wrestling with is how to limit the spread of a virus which they are only just beginning to understand.
They are trying to do this in a world where we all expect to travel and to spend time at matches, concerts or gigs with thousands of strangers. They need us to be prepared but not to panic.
That requires us all to do something I had to learn after I was diagnosed with cancer five years ago. Initially, I treated my doctors like someone I was interviewing on the radio: I demanded answers.
I searched the internet looking for what they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. I craved certainty. Then one consultant explained patiently that doctors don’t and can’t know everything, there can be no certainty and there are no risk-free courses of action.
So it was that I decided to seek medical advice before travelling but to make my own choice on whether to proceed with my trip to South East Asia even as the virus began to spread.
I gambled that COVID-19 was as likely to reach these shores as neighbouring countries. So, it has turned out. Vietnam has had 16 confirmed cases. The UK has had 13.
I am hopeful that I will not prove to be the 14th but, as I wait for the result of my test, I think of the health service workers who are already overwhelmed by the demands COVID-19 is placing on them. They need not just our thanks but also our help and, above all, our understanding.