Timeline:
Saturday - I have dinner with friend across a table. I think technically we were distanced by about a metre and masks were worn when not eating, but let’s say it was too close for comfort.
Monday - Friends has to travel so takes test as a precaution. Feels fine.
Thursday - Friend loses sense of taste.
Friday - Test comes back positive. Friend contacts everyone she has had contact with within 48 before the test so I lock myself in the house.
Now, I’m going to do my utmost to get a quick test done on Monday or Tuesday, but they are hard to come by and I really need to be working on Tuesday. Tuesday is day 10 after my last contact with this person. The normal time would be 14 days. However, I feel the situation is a little different because she got the test before she got symptoms and my contact with her (Saturday) was five days before she had any symptoms at all, so I think it’s unlikely she was infectious at that time. My partner was at the same dinner and is here at home with me. Neither of us have had any symptoms. My work is with people, but I am able to stay at least four metres away and everyone wears masks. Not going will cause lots of trouble. What do you think? Am I in the clear or am I justifying something that I shouldn’t be?
Because the guidelines say, at least where I am, something like this: 1. you have symptoms, 2. you get test and 3. if your test is positive you need to contact everyone you had contact with up to 48 hours before the test. These 48 hours, as I understand it (for example: here) refer to the time a person is infectious before the onset of symptoms. I saw this person 5 days before the onset of her symptoms. Basically, if she had got tested when she had her first symptoms, I wouldn’t even have been contacted.
Yes, exactly. I’m at 120 hours before onset of symptoms. That’s got to make a difference.
Obviously if she tested positive on Monday, something was already in here systems, and my doubt would be that she did have symptoms earlier but didn’t notice them. However, I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing as her feeling clearly unwell on Monday.
(Luckily, so far, apart from the smell/taste issues, she is still okay as well.)
I think people are most infectious right before they develop symptoms, and their infectiousness drops fairly quickly after that. And she tested positive two days after you were together.
The thing that I find more reassuring than “she didn’t have symptoms when we were together” is “it’s been 10 days”. While there are cases that take as long as 14 days to develop, it usually shows up within a week. Of course, you haven’t been tested. So you might be asymptomatic, or presymptomatic.
Does your employer have a policy? I would quarantine, until 14 days or until I got a negative test result, whichever was first. But I can work from home. I don’t know that I’d lose my job to quarantine in your situation.
It’s not that she didn’t have symptoms when we were together. She didn’t have symptons until five days after I saw her.
What I am hoping to do is get a fast test on Tuesday. That would be my ideal solution and it is in line with local guideline, but I might not be able to because, well, I’m not the only one in this situation.
“Feels fine” to “loses sense of taste” doesn’t really note the onset of symptoms accurately, and the onset of symptoms isn’t an accurate clock if you want to calculate beginning of infectiousness. Did she use a pulse oximeter to detect lower oxygen saturation levels (often a symptom, but not always noticeable) on Tuesday? Perhaps she had a mild headache, but forgot? Is it possible that she didn’t think anything of that bout of coughing on Monday as she’s a smoker?
Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus.
This one is easy as it definitely sounds like you are trying to justify going back to work. In my opinion, you owe your coworkers and the public a negative test result. To do otherwise is unnecessarily reckless.
Can’t you lay this timeline out at work and ask them? Not just your boss, but everyone in the shared space?
If someone else gets it in the next ten days (even if it isn’t actually from you) will that adversely effect your employment or your relationships with your coworkers?
The guidelines here, which is Italy, are either 14 days without symptoms or 10 without symptoms and a negative test executed on the tenth day. Problem is that the results of the test, if done via the national healthcare route, will likely take so long that I’d hit the 14 days before I even got them. So I might see if I can pay my way out of this hole and go private. However, I might not be the only one trying.
For comparison, in my native Holland it’s ten days and that’s it, but I know a lot of countries say 14 days. In Holland they mainly cut the time shorter so that people wouldn’t skip out altogether, though I think after 10 days it’s a lot less likely to go wrong, so I guess they think it’s worth the pay off of more people adhering and fewer work days being lost.
Well in the end my employer’s guidelines won’t even accept the fast test - the so-called antigenic test - and so I will have to do the slow molecular one. In actually fact, my coordinator, whom I contacted about this, kind of gave the impression that he would have preferred for me to have kept my mouth shut - no one from the health authority has ever contacted me, so I would have totally got away with doing nothing or a rapid test - and said he feels the guidelines are a bit much. To be honest, I tend to agree. Perhaps, because I am Dutch and bit more pragmatic. I mean, medically speaking they are correct, there is a small risk after the tenth day, but the risk is a lot smaller and and what we are seeing here is that a. the tests to get out sooner are extremely hard to find and/or take long to process and b. literally millions of people skip isolation. And while I agree that it is not okay, it has to be said that the cost of all of the disorganisation falls squarely on us workers. After having already missed work due to having to stay home for slight colds, I am kind of running out of money. Meanwhile Track and Trace is also dead so no one is contacted by the health services and so they are basically relying on people to lose money out of the goodness of their hearts and you can see how that would go wrong. Dopers can sleep soundly, I will be a good Pookah, but I have to say it’s not wholehearted.
p.s. At the moment it seems they are going to supply GPs with rapid tests, which I think would be great. Though probably too late for me.
No,it isn’t, though at least we have a free health service.
Fingers crossed they get on with my test - and everyone’s. Both for selfish reasons and because of the fact that people not knowing they are infected for long periods of time is not a good look.
But if someone in the office got COVID, even though there’d be no reason to think it was from you, you would be blamed. People that want you to lie for them aren’t going to have your back, later.
To be honest, I work for a state-run entity in Italy and the chaos and indifference are such that I highly doubt anyone would care or notice what I did or didn’t do. I am doing what I think might be right, even if not fully convinced, and if it’s still wrong then I’ve done the best I could given the guidelines I had. That’s my motivation, more than fear of being held legally or otherwise responsible.
So, finally got the test result - took about four days - and I can happily get back to work.
However, I keep hearing from friends that, in those situations, they get tested right away, without waiting ten days and then get on with their lives. In fact, I found out yesterday, my contact who tested positive did just that: tested right away, got a negative result, went back to work, and then got symptoms later anyway (presuming they were due the same contact). I don’t think what others do is an excuse for me to behave badly, but it makes me angry because I lose time and especially money doing the right thing while those who make up their own rules get to work. Then, if enough people act like them, we risk another lockdown because the number of cases spin out of control and I will lose work again. I think some people don’t even know they are supposed to wait ten days - which is partly on the government for creating a jungle of confusing guidelines about everything which are also not publicised enough - but some just chose not to because they got to live. Which I can even symphatise with up to a point, but it also makes me feel like a mug for staying at home.
Sorry, just blowing off steam, but it makes me very frustrated.
Since Italy is about to have a metric shit-ton of deaths from COVID-19, potentially worse than the horrible first wave, I don’t think a lockdown is avoidable at this point. All you can personally do is control your behavior and attempt to influence those close to you.
In actually fact, my coordinator, whom I contacted about this, kind of gave the impression that he would have preferred for me to have kept my mouth shut - no one from the health authority has ever contacted me, so I would have totally got away with doing nothing or a rapid test - and said he feels the guidelines are a bit much. To be honest, I tend to agree. Perhaps, because I am Dutch and bit more pragmatic. I mean, medically speaking they are correct, there is a small risk after the tenth day, but the risk is a lot smaller and and what we are seeing here is that a. the tests to get out sooner are extremely hard to find and/or take long to process and b. literally millions of people skip isolation. And while I agree that it is not okay, it has to be said that the cost of all of the disorganisation falls squarely on us workers. After having already missed work due to having to stay home for slight colds, I am kind of running out of money. Meanwhile Track and Trace is also dead so no one is contacted by the health services and so they are basically relying on people to lose money out of the goodness of their hearts and you can see how that would go wrong. Dopers can sleep soundly, I will be a good Pookah, but I have to say it’s not wholehearted.