{"id":40075,"date":"2021-04-09T13:26:11","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T12:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=40075"},"modified":"2021-06-13T16:15:25","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T15:15:25","slug":"day-8-of-potentially-endless-quarantine-the-systems-bust-folks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/day-8-of-potentially-endless-quarantine-the-systems-bust-folks\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 8 of Potentially Endless Quarantine, the System’s Bust Folks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

**Update: we received results for three of the four PCR tests. Ju’s Day 2 result has not arrived after 10 days. The Day 8 results came back on Day 11. In the end our quarantine was only delayed by a few hours. It wasn’t a good experience though, the customer service was poor and we had low confidence in the system. Hopefully it’ll improve before widespread international travel restarts. Good luck future travellers. \ud83d\udc4d**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having travelled to I don’t know how many countries, I love my home town of Kimberley. It has no oceans, no beaches, no mountains, no desert dunes, no expansive lakes or endless forests, but it has something more, the sensation of belonging. I’ll always want to travel, in one form or another, as I’ve always been intrigued to discover what’s over the next hill or around the next corner, but I’ll always be drawn home too, I think, eventually. It feels good to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that I can see much of home at the moment mind you. After leaving the van in storage eight days ago we’ve been in quarantine in the Cooler. That’s something which feels quite normal to say now after a year’s pandemic and our third time of self-isolating. We’ve watched ‘A Year in Space’ on Netflix these past few days and seeing footage of astronauts in quarantine before their flight got us thinking. They were sat behind glass talking to family on the other side with a microphone, closer contact than the video calls which have been most people’s only method of communication with their families for months. They had to be isolated for a couple of weeks, which viewed just over a year ago would have looked hard, but is now laughably easy compared with the many months people have had to ‘shield’ around us. In some ways their quarantine was probably easier than what a lot of the UK has gone through this past year, but then none of us have had to actually sit on a fiery rocket and be blasted into an airless vacuum, so hats off to those astronauts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Watching life in space on our new big (for us) TV!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This will be the shortest of our three quarantines at only 10 days, the first was two weeks<\/a> (we weren’t told to do it, but it felt like the right thing to do after coming back from Spain at the start of the pandemic) and the second was for 17 days or so<\/a> (we added extra days to the required 14 day quarantine period so we would be virus free for my Mum’s funeral), and it doesn’t feel too confining to be locked in here. The Cooler<\/a> measures 6m by 4m with a small mezzanine and a wet room, and we’ve access to a yard so can stand under the sky, feel the snow and rain and breathe in fresh air. Some folks might go mad being constrained in such a small space. It’s tempting to say we’re used to it after so much time spent living in a motorhome but I think the fact we feel OK in here is more down to (a) travelling back to the UK each time over these past 12 months has been stressful and it feels a huge relief to be home and (b) nothing much is happening outside. The UK’s easing of lockdown shifts forwards again in 3 days, on the 12 April when shops re-open and pubs are allowed to serve people outside. That’s the same day when we’re officially allowed out and accidentally good timing I suspect, as being locked in when lots is happening around is more difficult to handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I say ‘we’re allowed out’ that legally requires us to have two negative PCR test results from days 2 and 8 of our quarantine, which isn’t looking very likely at the moment! As we were required to, we bought our tests from one of the companies approved<\/a> by the UK Government, we chose Expert Medicals<\/a>, who like many of the providers send the test kits directly to Oncologica labs for processing and sending out results. All started out well, and the kits were here when we got back home. All the bits were present in each of them, which we took for granted at the time but having read reviews since, we were lucky to have swabs, instructions, reference numbers etc (that said, the Royal Mail tracking codes on two of the included envelopes report as already being used on their website, so we can’t track them).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We completed the day 2 tests and I got a negative result 4 days later (the result was delayed by the Easter weekend, fair enough, although anyone waiting for their day 8 test would have been forced to quarantine to day 11 or 12). Ju’s result still hasn’t come, 6 days after taking it (update: no result after 8 days now). We’ve done a few PCR tests before these ones and know how careful we have to be registering the kits online, taking the tests and packaging them up for posting to the lab. We both did exactly the same thing and posted in the same box at the same time, so why one has gone missing we have no idea. She’s chased Expert Medicals numerous times on the phone and via chat sessions (we have no way to contact the lab direct) and has been fobbed off each time, with promises to return calls broken. We’re not hopeful we’ll get the day 8 results in time for us to leave quarantine after 10 days, or in Ju’s case, ever. We’ve checked their Terms and Conditions and it seems they aren’t liable for any of their third party suppliers, so if Royal Mail or the lab have lost Ju’s test Expert Medicals aren’t liable for that, oh and as soon as they have sent the kit out they don’t give refunds. So it looks like we coughed up \u00a3160 each for having the kits posted to us, and no guarantees that we’ll get any results!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Negative<\/a>
You may want to think twice before using expert-medicals.co.uk… It’s our own fault for not checking the reviews before we bought kits in Santander but (a) we were under stress and (b) we expected a government-approved supplier to be better than this<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Each day we’re in here we’re both called by folks from NHS Test and Trace, who check we’re in quarantine and ask if we’ve completed the tests. We’ve explained to them Ju’s test has gone AWOL. They’re a nice enough bunch, but have a script to stick to which says we have to have negative results for both tests before we can leave quarantine, and that we should contact our provider. When we say we have, all they can do is suggest we contact the NHS 119 number. None of them are massively surprised the results haven’t come (which in itself isn’t a surprise given reports like this on the BBC<\/a>), and looking at reviews for Expert Medicals<\/a> we can understand why, although to be fair the problem seems to be with the lab, who also get poor reviews<\/a>. Expert Medicals have since featured in a short article in The Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve since checked reviews for a selection of the government’s approved suppliers and there are limited positive responses for postal testing and large numbers of 1 star reviews. Either few people getting a good service are writing a review or there’s a wider issue with the system. Not surprising perhaps, an expensive service which tens of thousands of travellers are mandated to use (with maybe hundreds of thousands once international leisure travel is legal again) is bound to attract lots of new suppliers whether they or their partner labs are able to offer any kind of decent service or not. There was one provider when the system was first launched, and around 15 when we booked our tests at the end of March, today there are 82. This morning’s news is saying that everyone returning from abroad, when travel is legal again, will have to take a test (or two for the amber and red countries) and that the price of testing needs to come down. I’m not sure the system has capacity to do this at the moment, and if they are struggling to provide a decent service at the current prices, I don’t know how it will be able to happen if margins are squeezed further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Trust<\/a>
This review for another of the suppliers seems to sum it up well…<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ju was told to call NHS 119 this morning after her daily test and trace call, to see if there is any other way to get a test to get out of quarantine should her Day 2 test never reappear. Their response is that we must have both results to end quarantine and we’ll need to buy another PCR test for Ju if her Day 2 one doesn’t come back before day 10. She’ll then need to take that AFTER we’ve taken the Day 8 PCR test. What’s the point of that? Arggghhhhh!!!! The system appears to currently be broken. We’ve both got our fingers crossed that our Day 8 test results come back quicker than my Day 2 results, because if they also take 4 days we’ll have to quarantine for at least 12 days. We’ve both had text messages offering vaccinations but we can’t book in as we’ve no idea when we can go. We will get out of here at some point, but there’s zero chance we’re going abroad again while this government-mandated test system, which costs a bomb and, broadly speaking, just doesn’t work, is still in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahem, sorry rant over. As you can probably tell, we’re finding it all a little frustrating. Anyway, in other news:<\/p>\n\n\n\n