What is your experience with Covid-19 testing?
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche plans to launch a test that can detect the coronavirus in 15 minutes. What have your experiences with Covid-19 testing been so far and how do you feel about the idea of more testing, for example, in schools and airports?
From the article Rapid Covid-19 tests could offer a path back to normal
In my personal opinion, a preventive dirham is better than a quantar test! It is better not to waste money to increase the number of tests, which costs 180 francs, while the vaccine is twenty francs. Let's increase the vaccine doses. Let's finish yesterday's vaccination needed as soon as possible. Let's start by vaccinating the lower ages, which are the captain of the ship economically and in service.
In principle, the Swiss government has entered into contracts with several companies to manufacture the vaccine, about 36 million doses. I mean, almost enough for everyone in Switzerland and more. If we assume that every person has taken two doses, but on the ground, if the number of vaccines continues, how much it is, the process to end will take years to complete. Stores close a month and a half. How does a skipper ship go?? So all pharmaceutical factories around the world should share the manufacture of vaccines, prevent their monopoly by their detectors and join hands locally and globally to vaccinate as many people as possible for the shortest time.
“To anoint your body with an insecticide before you enter the forest is better for you than looking for an insect.” And you were unleathed.
برأي الشخصي درهم وقاية خير من قنطار اختبار! من الأفضل ان لا نُهدر الأموال لزيادة عدد الاختبارات الذي يكلف 180 فرنك بينما اللقاح عشرين فرنك فلنعمل على ازدياد جرعات اللقاح فلننتهي من تلقيح الأمس حاجة بأسرع وقت ممكن و لنبدأ بتلقيح الأعمار الأقل والتي هي قبطان السفينة اقتصادياً وخدمياً فإن قطاعات العمل بدأت تنهار
فمن حيث المبدأ الحكومة السويسرية ابرمت عقود مع عدت شركات لتصنيع اللقاح حوالي 36 مليون جرعة يعني تقريبا تكفي كل من في سويسرا وأكثر إذا افترضنا ان كل شخص اخذ جرعتين لكن على ارض الواقع اذا استمر عدد الملقحين كم هو فإن العملية لتنتهي ستستغرق سنين لتكتمل ليس من المنطقي ان تغلق المتاجر شهر ونصف كيف تسير سفينة بلا رُبان؟؟ لذلك يجب ان تتشارك جميع مصانع الأدوية حول العالم بصناعة اللقاحات ومنع احتكارها من قبل مكتشفيها والتكاتف محلياً وعالمياً لتلقيح أكبر عدد ممكن من السكان بأقصر مدة.
"أن تدهن جسمك بمضاد حشرات قبل دخولك الغابة خير لك من أن تبحث عن الحشرة". ودمتم سالمين.
I think that the Swiss Health System really sucks !!! Perhaps, if the Suisse got their head out of their a.., and they cared about everyday people, everybody would have been vaccinated already. Why is a country so small with 8.5 million people, have NOT been able to take care of this issue ? Because, their leaders are incompetent and don`t care ! And they have good salaries according to us, not according to them. Because most of them are lazy, mean to each other, and authoritarian. Should most of them should be in jail ? Put it in a referendum and ask the people?
I have not been able to travel to Switzerland due to Covid, I sometimes am only in Switzerland for a few days to months, per year. I reside most of the time in Slovakia , we are in a Black Zone (High risk area)at this time new stricter regulation, Every 7 days testing if you need to travel or shop is required in the area I am located. Slovak Government purchased Spunik V , it will be available to all on a voluntary basis in approximately two weeks.
I am in my 60s A single Father of a teen Daughter(Divorced full custody ), Safety is the issue, Testing is uncomfortable. The situation has given me a financial Burdon ( Restaurant ) We must all bear with the situation. Politics and cooperate profits Are making this difficult.
Regular testing is not an enjoyable experience but I would be happy for it to become the new norm, if only to avoid having to debate the vaccine. I don't want to be forced to take any product made by a company with the history of corruption that Pfizer has.
👍
My beef is the contact tracing app. I downloaded it months ago, willing to do a little something to help us all. On the 3rd of January I started feeling tired and a bit achey but shrugged it off. Similar on the 4th of Jan, but when I slept for 19 hours on the 5th it was clear something was up. On the 6th, after 10 hours sleep, I wretched after eating a small piece of dried cracker and my temperature was 37.8 so I decided to see the Dr. The fast test confirmed I was positive for Covid-19 and I'm in my 10 day isolation from my family as I type this, and they are in quarantine. I entered my symptoms in the app on the 5th and you can't trigger anything without a code and you only get a code after a confirmed positive test. I thought I would get the code at the same time as the test result yesterday but the Dr said no. At home, via the Aargau tracing link I entered the names of all close contacts from the 1st of Jan that I could remember (hardly any thankfully) and there you can tick a box to request a code to trigger the app. I submitted the form over 24 hours ago and none of my listed contacts have been contacted and I haven't been sent a code. There are horses bolting all over the alps here! Now I'm thinking "well, if in the future the app notifies me that I've been in close contact with someone who tested positive and that I should quarantine and perhaps test, I'm not sure I would trust it" Why would I want to start a 10 day quarantine when by the time I get notified I may have been in contact with them 8 or 9 days ago? My current experience of the app doesn't inspire trust or a desire to follow the rules.
I have created an account just so I can share my experience but I also realise that it will hardly mean anything in a time of total irrationality.
My one experience:
20 November 2020 out with a group of 12 people;
23 November 2020 some said they were not well
?? November 2020, but a few days later, someone reported positive;
26 November 2020 I and my partner were tested at a laboratory in Basel. The result was negative.
In the end 5 of the 12 were positive as far as I can remember.
After reading and seeing people having this swab shoved up their nose, I decided that if it was to happen I would make noise and I did.
It was very uncomfortable and I am sick of the people who tell me I am weak or “oh it wasn’t that uncomfortable!”
Afterwards and since the 26th of November 2020, my nose has been unusually filled with mucous in the side in which I was tested.
I have seen some wonderful comments all over the internet about covid-19, good and bad, truth and fake.
From my own experience, I will not be getting tested unless absolutely necessary.
I do not find any of the reporting here or other online portals sufficient enough.
The reports are usually ‘opinions’ and not straight statistics and facts.
“Vaud is not included because they report late” or some such thing! This is nonsense in a small country like Switzerland that is shouting loudly because of the shutdowns and yet the ‘information’ is lacking. This is totally wrong and unethical in my world.
I was sick in 2018 with the Flu and the symptoms were similar to what is now called covid-19.
For ten days I had fever, sweating, lack of sleep, lost taste, I normally have a lack of smell anyway - but that was gone also, I had hallucinations hourly, I could hardly breath. I ended up taking some medicine to clear the nasal congestion - only. Nothing else.
Since this time I have taken better care of my self and make sure I am warm all the time and sometimes overly warm. I have hardly been sick since and if I start to become sick I can trace it back to not being warm enough.
In a strange way, only comparing it to non medical ways, I felt better afterwards and less sickly.
My doctor has told me that “covid-19 was not around in 2018” - I am not sure how he knows this anyway???
My doctor has told me that the loss of smell and taste is not exclusively covid-19 but my impressions from online information portals is that it is covid-19 specific.
I remain generally healthy with some underlying stress about the whole situation and the uncertainty of people ‘in charge’ making decisions that seem very unscientific or incomplete and news portals not really making information really, really easy to read and to know about.
Update: my nasal passage has almost repaired itself @ 27 December 2020.
I wrote the above account and then later deleted my account but back again.
It is now 2 Feb 2021 and my nose has not cleared up totally and yesterday I realised I really needed to buy a disinfections nose spray. I was using Bepathen and while that was keeping it at bay it did not clear it up entirely. Sometimes I am slow on the uptake for these things.
What was happening is that as soon as I stopped the cream in my nasal passage the mucous would return and it goes from being thick and sticky to running to very dry and hard.
I had thought it was gone but not really.
I am now using the nasal spray and this morning it was much better but I will see after a few days.
I did a little research and the only conclusion I can come to is that the person doing the testing has injured my nasal passage(s) and I have even wondered if the swab was put into the wrong cavity? I am no nose doctor but I am not happy, especially now that I have to pay for this to be fixed.
Unless someone absolutely forces me to take a nose swab I am not doing it. There must be other ways of testing for this 'seriously deadly virus' and if not, then why not? It is 2021 for goodness!!!!
Now 8 February 2021 and my nasal passage is much, much better after using the spray, mentioned above. A disinfection spay for the nose.
Unless something changes with my nose I will say that it is healthy again and will not post again regarding this.
However, I am not happy that my nasal passage was injured because of a covid-19 test!
I had several test...one nose only, two nose and throat, three only nose, 4 nose throat...call back sorry we need to retest, then only nose.
Worse is knowing once a person is infected they are forced to go to work on the 11th day without any test the government does not pay, thus if the person is still infected they continue spreading the virus versus staying at home till they test negative
No wonder that the numbers from July 2020 to now rose over 300k cases.
Obviously the Swiss covid task force are ignorant to the situation.
I called the government minister of health to ask as to why people where sent back without making sure they no longer where positive I got yelled at by the woman in Bern screaming at me why people kept calling,,,to which I said because you work for the people and I want an answer, she hung up. I called the Canton Schaffhausen health department and was laughed at and told the government knows what is is doing...obviously not !
I called the city of Zurich to ask why the casino remained opened being a hotspot (now closing) a few months ago no response
I called newspapers to talk about such issues and was told " we will see if it is of public interest " ???? I said obviously it is!
I called head of coop to ask why they do not disinfect carts, have cashier wear masks , limit the amount of people...they said they do all of that which was not true and said
we will get back thank you.
The people who rule for the people are utterly out of track and obviously do not bother following the leads.
I also wonder if they would like 60 to keel over so they do not have to pay pensions ahv and so on
this is not a conspiracy theory they are facts
I did 8 quick tests in airports. Even when one turned out positive the next 3 tests they did were all negative. These tests are very inaccurate. The colleague that I was travelling with had 4 postiive and 11 negative tests in 3 airports. It is just absurd.
I had to be tested all in all 3x
the first time he said only the throat versus throat and nose
the second time only the nose then they made a mistake and called apologetically and said I had to come and get another test the next day.
Rules and regulations brigs distrust...why once there and another there and then both...come on. Chaos!
Same with me
Mostly fear-mongering. Percentage of the population almost no deaths.
Hauptsächlich Angstmacherei. Prozentual der Bevölkerung fast keine Tote.
Before my family did, I took 5 tests from all the providers we could find: 1 was positive and 4 were negative. They are not reliable and Elon Musk just had the same experience. I trust him more than any Swiss or European politician.
Our test was lost: I gave the sample for COVID-19 test at HUG (Geneva) on 23 Oct. I called HUG for days and they kept asking me to wait. Finally, on Monday evening, I was told that the sample was lost.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Did they tell you what happened to it and what you should do next?
No, they did not tell what happened, though I expressed my keen interest to know. They only asked to take a new test.
I did my rest here and they lost it, I did not redo it as it is utterly unpleasant procedure and I was angry as no compensation was provided.
I was talking yesterday with someone who had a test and asked him where you get tests here in my small Swiss town. He paused and looked at me rather strangely and then replied, at the hospital or in a GP surgery. In my view this is what one would “normally” expect of a medical and Public Health Service. Sadly Britain provides such cheap and shoddy and unreliable one size fits all services which do not value the customer, client or patient and even in something as vitally important as healthcare.
I am sure this would improve the whole testing issue here in the UK. My niece's son was sent home from school because of a fever. He then had to be tested for Covid-19. They had to drive to Manchester Airport, that's a 25 minutes drive. He tested negative and the mother was told he had to be tested again. You would think at the same place but no. They were asked to drive to Aberdeen. That's a 6-7 hours drive one way with a sick small child!?! She refused to go and I can't blame her.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.