A businessman from Kent, UK says he and his son have been waiting nine days for a coronavirus test #COVID19 #coronavirus #UK #Kent #quarantine #epidemic

A businessman from Kent says he and his son have been waiting nine days for a coronavirus test after getting a cough following a trip to northern Italy.

Phillip Meyer, 48, said he was told by the 111 service on 2 March that he and his 12-year-old son needed to be tested.

A clinician told him someone would contact them to arrange a test at his home in Westerham, near Sevenoaks, or at drive-in centre at a local hospital. But he has heard nothing since, despite daily calls to the 111 service to check on the progress.

Speaking to the Guardian, Meyer, a director of an online retail company, said: “In eight days absolutely nothing has happened. We’ve either slipped through the cracks, or the government is really not doing a very good job of testing people. And I fear it’s the latter.”

He added: “We are testing between 1,000 and 2,000 people a day in the UK, so clearly there is a bottleneck. If in South Korea they test 15,000 a day, why can’t we do that here?”

Meyer and his wife and two sons went on a half-term family skiing trip to South Tyrol on the border between Italy and Austria. A few days after returning he and his oldest son developed a cough. When his son was sent home from school, the family began to self-isolate, and called 111 for advice about testing.

“We were told that someone would call us back to organise a test. But we’ve since been waiting, waiting, and waiting. I’ve called 111 every day but there’s been no more information. They can see on the system that we had been referred and were waiting to be called by a hospital for testing.”

When Meyer suggested turning up at Maidstone hospital for a drive-in test, he was advised against this. “I was told ‘If you do that we’ll take you out of the queue of people to be tested, and you’ll lose your current place. And there’s no guarantee you’ll be tested at the hospital’.”

He added: “My main concern is that I don’t want to spread this to other people. People at my son’s school are understandably anxious to know whether we have been tested, and we can’t tell them anything. It’s awful. So our whole family are just self isolating.

“If I’m getting this, there must be thousands of people who are in the same situation. I’m lucky to be able to do the job I do from home. It feels like we’ve done everything that we should have done to try and protect people. And the government isn’t doing anything really to help. The only way you can contain this is by testing people, and then isolate them, but it’s way too late for me.”

Courtesy of theguardian.com