This article has been medically reviewed by Keri Peterson, MD, Internal Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital.
On Friday, March 6, I was sitting in my living room when I got the voicemail message that just said, “Call me back,” in an urgent tone. That’s when I knew that I had tested positive for the new coronavirus, aka COVID-19. I’m fine now, mostly, a little short of breath with an occasional cough, but it’s been…an experience.
Here’s how everything happened: On Tuesday, February 25, I was at a lunch with seven people at a restaurant, which is where I suspect I caught the virus. I later learned that one person was infected, although I didn’t notice her showing any symptoms yet. I, along with two other people, were sick by that Friday. They told me that their symptoms were very mild and that they only had a brief fever. For me, it was a little worse.
On Friday, February 28, I woke up with a sore throat and headache. I work from home, and by noon I felt so under the weather that I had to stop working. By 2 p.m., I had chills and body aches and a mild fever of 100.2°F that was gone within a half hour after I took Advil. By 3 p.m., I was in bed and stayed there well into the next day. Initially, I thought it was the flu.
I live near Seattle, and the day I got sick, I learned that someone in the area had gotten COVID-19. I also read that they had no connection to anyone in an affected country overseas, and so their case was suspected to have been caused by transmission from someone else in the community. On Saturday, February 29, I went to a clinic near my home and had my temperature taken again (100.5°F). The nurse I saw gave me Tamiflu, an antiviral for the flu.
At that point, the new coronavirus was on my mind.
I got home and called the consulting nurse from the clinic again and asked if I could get tested for COVID-19.
I was really worried, but she told me I didn’t meet the criteria for testing.
At that time, you had to have had contact with someone under investigation for the disease or who had traveled to China recently. She told me that if I wanted to be specifically tested for the flu, I could go to urgent care. She didn’t recommend going there, though—they were really crowded with other people with the flu, and I’d risk either infecting others or being exposed to viruses that others had. So I stayed home.
The nurse also suggested that I enroll online in the Seattle Flu Study.
Through the Seattle Flu Study, participants are sent a swab kit, which is then sent back for analysis.
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It’s a research project, and if you qualify, they send you a kit, ask you to swab your nose, and mail it back to them. (There have since been reports that they’d begun testing samples for COVID-19 against federal guidelines.) I’m not sure if the nurse knew I’d get tested for new coronavirus by enrolling in the study, but I’m grateful that she pointed me in that direction.
Within two hours, the FedEx guy was at my door with a swab kit. It was a Saturday, so I didn’t mail the sample back until Monday, March 2.
On Friday, March 6, I received that fateful voicemail from the public health department.
The way the woman said, “Call me back,” I just knew something was up. When we connected over the phone, she told me that I had tested positive for COVID-19.
The woman who delivered the news to me was amazing. She was calm, asked me about who I’d been in contact with, and talked to me about quarantining. I was instructed to quarantine until 72 hours after my fever was gone, or seven days after my first symptoms—whichever came later. By that time, I had been self-quarantining already for a week. I’m a copy editor, so I always work from home and could continue to when I felt well enough to do so.
I have a husband and two children who are 7 and 10, and luckily, they haven’t caught it. Novel coronavirus was a big unknown when I got my test results (and still is on many counts), so I really isolated myself from everyone by staying in my bedroom for the first 72 hours I was sick. In retrospect, I think this made a difference in lowering their risk of catching it.
Still, the health department suggested my family go under self-quarantine for 14 days so that we could monitor them and see if they developed any symptoms themselves. This means they don’t leave the house. My quarantine is over, but I still haven’t gone out, partly because I feel the science on how long the novel coronavirus may be contagious is up in the air on this.
My husband tested negative a couple of days ago, and my kids won’t be tested unless they have symptoms.
I’m still not kissing or hugging them, and that’s hard. We have Clorox wiping-down parties as a family. My 7-year-old daughter loves to do this, as she’s been wiping down all the doorknobs and handles and the bathroom sink as part of her weekly chores since she was age six. I’d like to think maybe this contributed in some small way to containing the virus in our household.
Truthfully, for me the illness hasn’t been that bad. A couple of years ago, I got the flu and found that to be worse. Being sick with COVID-19 felt different because I experienced shortness of breath, which is what tipped me off to the fact that I might have it. It was like I could still breathe but I couldn’t get a full breath, which felt a little scary. I’m typically a healthy person who always recovers easily from illness. It’s been almost two weeks now, and I’m just getting over it, which is similar to the experience I’ve had with any cold or flu.
What’s been hard for me is personally notifying everyone I can think of who I might’ve had contact with.
I’ve been on the phone for hours. It was difficult to know that I was disrupting and upending people’s lives. But they’ve been so gracious and have thanked me for telling them. That experience was more stressful than I realized it would be—and was honestly tougher than the illness itself.
Although my community has been amazing and incredibly supportive—there have been so many people who have asked if we needed any groceries or supplies dropped off for us—I realize there is still a lot of fear and stigma associated with COVID-19, which is why I’ve decided to remain anonymous in this piece.
For me, having the novel coronavirus has been manageable, but I realize that hasn’t been everyone’s experience.
I am most concerned for the people whose health is already compromised in some way, and it’s for them that we all need to take the measures we can to contain this virus as quickly as possible. I hope you’ll also consider not attending any events, especially if you’ve had any fever or symptoms. We all need to do what we can to keep others safe.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
