After three years and four shots, the scourge found me. (I did a RAT test.) It was a lousy weekend but I’m relieved to say the symptoms (fever, cough, bodyache) were manageable with OTC meds and have mostly already subsided. In some sense, it’s nice that an extended sense of impending doom has devolved into unpleasant experience.
My question is: Can I just go visit my usual clinic to get my allergy meds? What’s the protocol these days about visiting clinics and hospitals if you have been infected with or have just recovered from COVID? I know I can just call the clinic and inquire or just make an appointment and see what happens… but I’d like to know how other people are handling this. Thank you.
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My clinic has a quarantine area at the door. You can’t come in until they take your temperature and determine what you are there for. In my case I would tell them at the door and see what they say.
Ideally, you would call them up beforehand and tell them that you want to pick up the meds as you may still be infectious. They might allow you to wait outside until they prepare the prescription.
Having said, I went into the clinic with a negative RAT test but covid-like symptoms and while sitting in the chair the doc said, let me give you a PCR just to be sure and stuck the long Q-tip up my nose to take a sample. However, when he goes outside to give a PCR to someone in their car he is in full protective gear.
Anyway, I expect all clinics have their own rules and customs for dealing with this so just go and check them out. Double mask if necessary if only to show you are making an effort.
Clinic: You should call/mention it when you make an appointment. It’s being treated like the flu now which means stay home and avoid unnecessary contact for 7 days. In reality most people are contagious for 7-10 days and sometimes longer, so it’s a good idea to mask up for that long at least.
Hospital: Each hospital treats it differently but you will be separated from other patients immediately and most will still ask you to come in through a separate entrance if you arrive on your own. The hospital I’ve worked at is using a 14 day rule for outpatient visits.
If I were you I’d try to wait until I get over Covid, maybe a week or so, to go to the clinic for something small like hay fever medicine. I’d feel guilty knowing I could give Covid to someone just to get hay fever medicine, especially at a hospital were more vulnerable people could catch it. Don’t you have any decongestants at home to at least help your symptoms a little bit?
When I got COVID a couple weeks ago the doctor said I should quarantine until Day 0+5 since symptoms first appeared; if at that time I hadn’t gotten any new symptoms and was without a fever for 24 hours, I could go out and about freely with a mask. He said otherwise I needed to isolate for at least ten days or until I was without a fever for 24 hours.
Thanks all for the replies. It looks like (a) full disclosure, (b) at least 5 days post-recovery and (c) masking are the way forward. Fortunately the fever broke on Day 2, and that was Sunday. Today is Day 4 and all I have is an occasional tingle in the throat – far less scary than the phlegmy rattles you can hear all the time on the trains. My office also advised me to WFH this whole week. So unless there’s a nasty relapse in my future, I’ll be making that call to the clinic on Monday!