In May, the UK government promised a “world beating” Test and Trace system. Here is my experience of using that system.

I’m currently at my parent’s house in Liverpool helping my mum look after my 83-year-old dad who suffers from advanced vascular dementia.

/1

In August my dad stopped eating and refused to drink. At the start of September he was rushed to hospital with kidney failure. He spent two weeks on the ward before being discharged. We now have carers coming to the house four times a day in minimum PPE.

/2

Last Thursday (Oct 1st), my mum and I both developed coughs. Erring on the side of caution - since my dad is so high risk - my mum went for a Covid test first thing on Friday morning. So far so good, Liverpool has a drop-in testing facility at Allerton Library.

/3

I thought the results would be fast, after all, there have been rapid 30 minute test available since August, and they’ve already been rolled out in airports around Europe. The guidance says 72 hours, max.

72 hours later, nothing.

/4

In this time, many carers had come to the house. Again, erring on the side of caution, my mum and I wore masks and did our best to keep our distance. Good job we did, as on Tuesday morning, 96 hours after taking the test, my mum got her result. It was positive.

/5

I immediately opened my “world beating” Covid-19 app to register the fact that I almost certainly have the most deadly virus on Earth, thinking that it would automatically contact everyone I came into contact with up to four days before onset of symptoms.

/6

But no. You can’t. You can only tell the app that you definitely have Covid if you have a test code. So I raced off to the test site. I queued for two hours. That was on Tuesday.

It’s now Friday and my results have still not come through. I still do not have the code.

/7

In the meantime, I’ve lost my sense of smell. I *definitely* have Covid.

If I was contagious a few days before the onset of symptoms, that’s an 11 day delay on warning the people I’ve come into contact with via the app.

/8

This is a virus that we know spreads like wildfire. It has killed over 42,500 people in the UK already, and it will kill many, many more British people before we get a vaccine.

In the life-cycle of the virus, 11 days is an eternity.

/9

To those who still believe that Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson are doing “their best”, consider this: Thailand has a population about the same size as the UK, and it has only had 59 deaths. Vietnam is 1/3rd bigger in terms of size and population. They’ve had 35.

/10

My only hope is that my dad survives. I can hear him coughing now.

/ends

UPDATE: I just got my test result. Incredibly, it's negative. I put the code in the app & it said I can now go out and frolic in the open fields.

I still have a cough, my throat is killing me & I have no sense of smell. I probably took the test too late for it to be effective.