They arrived in middle of the night. The 999 crews wore protective suits and gave him a mask to wear
MOMENT AMBULANCE CREWS TOOK A MANCHESTER MAN AWAY INTO ISOLATION AMID FEARS HE MAY HAVE CONTRACTED THE CORONAVIRUS
THE ambulance crews arrived to take him away in the middle of the night from his home in south Manchester. They were double crewed. When the married father answered the door of his home in Chorlton, he said the paramedics - wearing hazmat (‘hazardous material’) suits - handed him a face mask and told him to put it on immediately. It had been explained to him by Public Health England in a series of phone calls that this would happen, but he said it was still a shock. With the mask covering his face, he was put in the back of the ambulance with two paramedics in hazmat suits, driven by a third paramedic.
He was taken into isolation at a specialist unit at a hospital in Greater Manchester. We are not identifying him nor the hospital at his request.
His quarantine was prompted by a work trip last month, when he had travelled to South East Asia – crucially not to China, though, nor Singapore.
Following his return home, he said he ‘felt quite ill two to three days later.’
For four days, he was sneezing, with a throat infection, temperature and sickness and nausea. He didn’t think anything of it because he had not been to China.
Towards the end of the week, he started to feel ‘much better’ and ‘went about my life.’
Eight days ago, he said he received a text message from the GP ‘asking that we call 111 if we’ve returned from that part of the world and have fallen ill after returning.”
He said he felt obliged to call and told them what had happened.
“They told me they’d call back if there was anything
else they needed to know, but didn’t ask me to isolate.
“Then, on Saturday night I got a call telling me they’d like me to come in for a cautionary test.” It took more than three days for the results to come in.
“Normally they take 12 hours,” he said. “But swabs and blood samples have all been couriered down to London and there’s now quite a backlog.”
He described the wait as frustrating and boring even though he was fairly confident he was okay.
On Tuesday, while still waiting for the results he became concerned when Public Health England discovered the virus can be carried by a host without that host showing symptoms and he thought he would now fall into that category.
“I’m the same, that’s why I’m worried now”, he said , just hours before the negative coronavirus test result came through.
“My symptoms were long gone by the time Public Health England got involved.
“It’s the wait that makes it so difficult. Even if I was infected, at least I’d know. It’s the uncertainty that makes it hard. The scary part is that someone can appear completely normal, yet be infected.
Then he heard from a senior doctor who told him the results were still not back, but the virus could be carried by a host without affecting that host in any way.
“They have nothing to prove or suggest that I may
or may not be a host, but this is the new advice they’re issuing. I queried why they’d want me in isolation if I was negative, and this is what they told me. I don’t know what to do with this information.”
He added: “The NHS is brilliant. The effort, dedication and resources that are obviously going into all of this is just staggering. The staff treat you brilliantly. Totally professional and try their best to cheer you up for the few fleeting seconds they’re in your room.”
When he was released from hospital after testing negative, he said it was such a relief to see faces again as ‘everyone I’ve seen in the last three or four days has had their head covered.’
“I have not seen a human face for so long,” he said. He is most annoyed about the racism that members of the Chinese community are facing as a result of coronavirus.
“I’m not Chinese and to my knowledge no infected person in the UK is of Chinese heritage.
“It sounds illogical, but we are hearing about a lot of racism towards people from certain communities. But people should not judge a book by its cover and they need to lay off with the racism.”