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Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield gets a Covid-19 PCR test in 2020 (Photo: Supplied)
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield gets a Covid-19 PCR test in 2020 (Photo: Supplied)

SocietyAugust 26, 2020

So you’ve tested positive for Covid. Here’s what happens next

Contributing writer
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield gets a Covid-19 PCR test in 2020 (Photo: Supplied)
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield gets a Covid-19 PCR test in 2020 (Photo: Supplied)

If you’re worried about getting a Covid-19 test because of fears of going into quarantine, don’t be. Here’s what you need to know, to make one scary thing a little less scary.

The government’s decision to move community cases of Covid-19 into quarantine facilities has raised fears among some New Zealanders that might stop them from getting a test. They’re worried about what will happen to their families, jobs and pets if they’re moved into quarantine.

The coronavirus is scary and the uncertainty of quarantine might make it worse. With an assist from director general of health Ashley Bloomfield, we’ll try to address concerns and demystify what happens after you’ve received the dreaded phone call.

So, you’ve got Covid-19. What happens now?

After your swab returns a positive result, the wheels of public health will start spinning quickly. The lab that processed your test will upload the results directly to the national public health database, EpiSurv. You won’t be waiting days for your result. A public health unit will call you immediately.

Don’t panic. There won’t be any police pulling up at your door. No one is coming for your children.

The first step is interviews.

What will they be asking me?

First, people will check on your symptoms. Then health professionals, either over the phone or in person, are going to reconstruct your life over recent days and weeks. Where have you been, who have you seen?

The first question you’ll be asked will be the easiest of all: They’ll want to know who your family is, where you work and who your close contacts are.

“The move into a quarantine facility isn’t something that happens immediately. The first priority is to find out who the close contacts are, make sure that family, workplace and other close contacts are isolated, and then can be tested,” Bloomfield said today.

“There’s no van that suddenly arrives at someone’s house and carts them off. That is not how the process works, I can reassure people.”

Once the people who are mostly likely to have picked up a virus from you are mapped out, the conversation starts about what’ll come next. This can take a few days.

Why would I leave my house for quarantine?

The whole idea of moving people into quarantine isn’t so much due to a lack of trust as it is to make your life easier. You’ve got Covid-19. You can’t go to work, you can’t go to school, you can’t go shopping for food and other basics. To minimise the risk of passing on the virus to a friend or family member bringing you groceries you’ll be moved to a hotel where all that is provided.

It should reduce your stress about accidentally passing on the virus.

So who comes with me to quarantine?

It’s specific to each case, but it could be your immediate family. Keep in mind that a lot of the transmission seen in Auckland so far is within immediate families, so your partner or child might already have the virus.

As of today there are 163 people in the Auckland quarantine facility due to the community outbreak. Ninety of them have tested positive for the virus.

What about my kids?

There have been concerns raised within the Māori and Pasifika communities in recent weeks that families with Covid-19 will be forcibly separated and Oranga Tamariki will take away the children of positive cases. That’s not happening.

Your kids might be coming with you if that’s the best option. If they test negative, they could also go with other whānau if that’s what you’d like. The idea is to give you the power.

Here’s what prime minister Jacinda Ardern said about this last Friday after rumours began circulating online about kids being taken away.

“That is simply not how these arrangements work. We try and, as best as possible, keep people in an arrangement that works for their family, whilst also trying to keep their family members safe from transmission. So we really work through that with public health clinicians on the ground. So I just want to dispel any suggestion that anything forcible is happening in these situations.”

What about my dog?

No one is going to leave your dog at home alone. If you’ve got a friend or family member who’d like your dog (or other household pet), public health can make that happen if it’s possible. Otherwise, they’ll find a suitable arrangement.

According to Bloomfield, worries about pets are something many of us would have in this scenario and they’ve thought it through.

“These are exactly the kind of issues that the team works with people on, including their employment and making sure their income needs are met, that any welfare needs are met, some of them might have other family members who aren’t household contacts who they are responsible for and look after,” he said.

What about my plant babies?

Yeah, they’ll figure that out too if it’s important to you.

What do I need to bring to quarantine?

In most cases a van will come and pick you up at home and bring you to the Jet Park Hotel near Auckland Airport. There have been a few cases where “bespoke quarantine arrangements” have been made – translation: It’s just too hard to get you to a quarantine facility so the government helps set one up for you.

At the quarantine facility you’ll be provided with a room for yourself and family coming with you. Whether the rooms are separate, connected or you’re sharing a single room will really depend on your situation.

You’ll be provided three hearty meals and two snacks daily. Breakfast comes with coffee.

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Your dirty laundry will be cleaned (and dry-cleaned), so you don’t have to pack for weeks and weeks. You’ll have satellite TV, wifi internet and daily health checks with a nurse.

Soap, shampoo and other basics are usually provided as well. If you need anything, the facility can get it for you.

And it’s all free.

Keep going!
Photo: Getty Images/Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Images/Tina Tiller

SocietyAugust 26, 2020

Taking one for the team (of five million)

Contributing writer
Photo: Getty Images/Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Images/Tina Tiller

Linda Burgess puts on her mask, goes to the mall, and finds herself slipping into a dystopian level two nightmare…

We’re in hell. Sartre wrote hell is other people, and he wrote that when malls were just a twinkle in Mr Westfield’s eye. Given that I’ll be living in track pants for the oxymoronic foreseeable future I need socks, and I vaguely think there’ll be a better choice at the mall in Lower Hutt than in the city. There’s those shops that are two initials linked by &, and there’s Farmers. The shops with the “&” have crappy socks that finish at the anklebone, if one still has a discernible ankle bone. The Farmers comes through with the goods.

We are two pairs of slightly smug eyes over our face masks. Robert is wearing one he fashioned himself out of a reasonably elegant handkerchief; mine is one of those two-sided papery things that the chemist shops now sell for an exorbitant amount. In the way the supermarkets make you buy more by saying you’re allowed a limited amount, my local pharmacy has made me feel extremely fortunate that I can buy three. Yes! They have PayWave!

It’s mid-morning; we’ve come early to beat the rush. And it’s the first Saturday of level two. Masks are advised, but not mandatory. On this occasion, partly because he wants to see if his works, and if he can go 15 minutes in it without keeling over, poisoned by his own exhaled breath, Robert is dead keen to give it a go. I’m more reluctant, think that he’s revelling in piety, when will he stop being a bloody Presbyterian? But God, if a virus is anywhere in Wellington it would be cunning enough to hide out at the mall. So mine is sort of half-on half-off, as in over mouth but not nose, and Robert says for God’s sake put it on properly, so I do.

There’d be, say, 200 or so people – perhaps more – at the mall, and other than the usual young Asian couple who’ve always known that all air is bad air, we’re the only ones wearing masks. Perhaps because we’re clearly old, and therefore can be assumed to have the sort of existing conditions that could cause us to cark it by the escalator, no one comes up and yells at us, or mocks us, as has apparently happened in other parts of the country. There’s just one strong reaction; a young father with two small kids is approaching. He looks at us as if we are morbidly ringing a bell: plague… plague… He grabs his two startled kids by their arms and brutally yanks them out of our way. He stares balefully into our rheumy old eyes.

We go back to our car via the supermarket and note that it’s thronging with people no doubt stocking up on toilet paper and flour. There’s none of the excitement that there was last time, when we couldn’t help feeling as if we were being asked to put up our blackout curtains and drink coffee made out of acorns so the Huns can’t get us. This time there’s just a sense of quiet malaise, but given that I so rarely go to malls, that could well be the normal atmosphere. As we walk along the bypass skirting along behind the checkout we see queues in which no one acts as if they’ve ever heard of social distancing. Other than the odd person working at the checkout, pretty much no one is wearing a mask. But by now I’m a convert, and like all converts I’m an extremist, and over the 15 minutes that it’s taken to find socks that go part way up my legs without cutting off my circulation, I’ve got so used to my mask, its clammy cosiness, that I’m thinking, why the fuck are they not? Don’t they know how quickly this thing spreads?

The mood, the mood. We listen to Morning Report, and it’s one long drone of petulant people either attacking or defending the government. So much for team of five million, suddenly we’re us and them and all the others as well, crazy with conspiracies, playing with the truth, annoyed at having to homeschool the damned kids again, at not being allowed to go to the footy, a book launch. Just generally pissed off.

With Auckland treated like Vichy France it’s just like the war, although surely the soldiers patrolling the border won’t shoot 100 people from Hobson Point as an example if they drag escapees from the harbour on their way to freedom. There’s the ex-mayor of Porirua on the radio and he’s something to do with trucks these days, and he’s moaning on about trucks not needing to be stopped because they’re always carrying food or supplies. Why can’t they just drive across, why do they have to stop?

And because when it comes down to it I sort of see everything in a screen in my head, a little movie playing nonstop, I imagine one of those trucks, supermarket logo emblazoned on its side, and although there’s soy milk and organic sourdough bread and toilet paper stacked at the back, hiding behind the false wall are 30 or so people. They are all ages, they’re deathly silent, a father has his hand clamped over a toddler’s mouth, an elderly couple in matching leisure wear are soundlessly weeping, and when the soldiers at the border get the sniffer dogs going and they paw at the toilet paper and find them, the soldiers know immediately who they are.

There are soldiers with guns and their eyes range across the group, all sweating like Prince Andrew on the dance floor. The soldiers relax. It’s OK, Sarg. They’re just going to their holiday homes up north. Look, they’ve worked bloody hard to buy a second home so I think this time we’ll turn a blind eye. They’re in the team of five million – must be – cause look, Sarg – they’re all wearing their face masks.

Society