Covid Test Day
Day 11 of Singapore quarantine: Covid test day
After 11 days of our 14 day quarantine today is probably the most important - today Katie and I do our official “swab” tests. Overall the process was pretty straight-forward but I’ll outline it below.
First we recieved SMS messages telling us the time and place for our test. Pretty much every day someone from the Minister of Manpower called to confirm that we had a test scheduled. Additionally they would remind us that we could not take Grabs to the test but had to take an official taxi. I’m not sure why this is the case - I can only assume it has something to do with contact tracing efforts. Katie and I had requested seperate testing times so that someone could be with the kids in the hotel while the other was off doing testing.
A few days before the test the hotel called our room and said they would make the taxi arrangements for us and that they would have someone escort us from the room to the taxi roughly 1 hour before the test time. There are several people getting tested each day (there seems to be about 4 full floors of people in Stay-At-Home notice in this hotel currently) so the hotel has to manage logistics for escorting people down to taxis to limit the potential cross-exposures.
On the day of the test the hotel called again to remind us they would be sending someone to come and escort us down. It turned out to be 2 people that they would send - one to walk in front of you and one behind you. Possibly they thought we would try to escape at this point so were taking extra precautions. The taxi already knew the testing location so was just a matter of getting into the taxi and riding to the testing location. In both mine and Katie’s cases the taxi drivers spent some time talking about how crazy America (and it’s President) were with respect to Covid which was kind of amusing (and mostly true).
Once we arrived at the testing location (which was at a school) it was basically what you would imagine:
- Show SMS message to entry guard to indicate you had an appointment
- Show SMS to lady at entrance who then directed you to follow some arrows through the building to the testing location
- Get temperature scan at entrance to temperature location
- Scan IPA bar-codes at registration desk
- Registration desk printed out tickets to take to testing “booth” (basically just a table and chair setup at intervals)
The test itself was fairly un-pleasant. The tester handed me a tissue, asked me to pull the mask down below my nose and then inserted the probe for what he said would be 10 seconds (felt like 25 at least). I survived and was ready to go and then he said he needed to do the other side. After another 10 (or 100) seconds I was done and told I did “very well” and was allowed to go. After a short sneezing session and wiping the water out of my eyes I scanned IPA bar-code again at the exit desk and followed signs back out to taxi stand where guard showed me to another taxi and I headed back to the hotel.
For me it took about an hour (with probably 45 mins in taxi transit) so was pretty much in-and-out. When Katie went a few hours later the lines were longer and it took her around 2 hours.
Beyond the unpleasant-ness of having a probe inserted into your brain the process was generally well-done and efficient. Now my fingers are crossed that there are no surprises in the results (we will be informed by SMS in the next 3 days) and our quarantine experience can end this weekend.