HOW'S this for a harrowing experience amid the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic and the knowledge that the highly transmissible delta variant of the disease is already on our shores.
Somebody I know was contacted by a contact tracer on July 25, 2021 because the sister of his wife tested positive for Covid-19.
The sister didn’t show any signs of the disease but she was tested because she was about to deliver a baby. Apparently, all expectant mothers, before they give birth, must be tested.
And so my friend was swabbed. He didn’t say if his wife and everybody else who lived in his house were also swabbed, but I assume they were.
In the morning of July 27, my friend received a call that he had tested positive. He was told to prepare his things because someone would pick him up and bring him to an isolation facility. At past five that afternoon, an ambulance arrived to take him to the Labangon Elementary School.
Two days later, he asked his wife to pick up his test result since he planned to claim Covid-related benefits from the Social Security System since he wouldn’t be able to report to work while he would be in isolation.
However, when she got hold of his test result, she was surprised to learn that he was negative.
Now you can understand my friend’s worry. He had been perfectly healthy, but that might not be the case anymore since his two-day stay in the isolation facility might have exposed him to people who truly have it.
Understandably, that same day he asked to be released. Of course, they wouldn’t let him since he needed to undergo another swab test to make sure he was negative.
My friend isn’t pointing fingers at anyone. He and almost everybody else in the country know the drill and he did what was required of him under the circumstances. He just wanted to share what happened to him and hoped that it wouldn’t happen to anyone else.
I forgot to ask him if the barangay or whoever it was that picked him up apologized for the snafu. If they did, I want to know how they went about it? Because really, how do you explain the mix-up?
I hope to high heavens they didn’t ask him to charge the whole thing to experience.
I know cases in Cebu City are high and the City Government is under pressure to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed and judging by pictures taken outside one hospital in the city it already has. I know everyone is doing their best to contain the spread of this disease, especially with so many out there painting a doomsday scenario. But please, be extra careful.
Anyway, my friend was re-swabbed on July 29 and awaits the result of his second test.