Covid-19 Test Blues

Earlier this week I received an invitation to have a Covid-19 test and this is my story.

For the last couple of months I’ve been logging my symptoms on the Covid-19 App  and recently I checked my emails to find an invitation to have a Covid-19 test.  The email had the link to the test registration page and the information that needed to be entered as part of the registration, so how could I refuse a chance to experience a coronavirus test first hand?

When I followed the email link and landed on the site I had a choice between a postal test or booking into a drive in test centre.  Decisions, decisions.  Which to choose?   Should I chose the postal, which would would take forever and supposedly has a high chance that it may not even have a return address or should I go to a test centre, which would be quicker and, in theory more precise, as you’d have people around you and you may actually have someone do it for you. Considering the high proportion of negative tests that have been occurring, I chose the drive in test centre. Yes, I also admit to a teeny bit of excitement at the thought of leaving the house. Since lockdown started I usually leave the house once every few weeks and it’s been almost 2 weeks since the last time.

The registration itself is pretty straightforward.  I stumbled because I hadn’t paid enough attention to the invite email and couldn’t work out which category of worker I was until I went back and re-read the email. Note to self: Pay more attention.

When I went to submit the registration, it wouldn’t process but there was no error message.  Eventually I discovered that my latest Firefox browser doesn’t interact with the website properly, I assume because the website is coded in such a way that it doesn’t work with the protections in Firefox and they hadn’t bothered to test it before release. Using Chrome worked because Google is fast and loose with your data compared to Firefox. This was the first inkling I had for how sloppy the process is and as you would expect, it didn’t fail to disappoint.

So yay, I finally managed to submit it and got my email confirming the appointment time. The appointment email had the address of the test centre – which was in Northern Ireland.  Considering I live on the UK mainland, that had a certain logistical challenge that needed to be overcome if I was to get there by the next day for the appointment but when I looked closely and added punctuation, it also included the address for my test centre.  Oops, it looks like the developer forgot to test what they’d coded and had concatenated the correct address with one that bore no relationship to the area.  Colour me unsurprised (and don’t get me going on the removal of separate test teams from IT development…).

The confirmation email had a link to a YouTube vid showing you how to do the test.  Ignoring the production values in the vid, I watched it carefully a couple of times to make sure I knew what to do and ewwed at having to use the same swab I’d stuck in my mouth up my nose.

Yes gentle reader, you use the same swab for both areas.  Which makes a complete mockery of the government’s counting of the nose and mouth tests as two tests but then the government has amply demonstrated that lying is the default position when it comes to anything they’re responsible for.

But I digress, so back to my story.

Further on in the email, there’s a paragraph telling you what to bring:

I printed off the email and sighed at the waste of the rainforest and gathered the bits together, so it would be waiting to go.  I don’t have hand sanitiser but did have antiseptic wipes.  It also suggests taking water as they won’t provide any.  I decided I would take both water and my travel mug filled with coffee because as you know, everything goes better with coffee.

At the appointed time I filled my travel mug, grabbed my stuff and jumped in the car.  Impressively, considering it hasn’t been used in ages, the car started first time.  When I got to the general area, there was enough signage to make sure I couldn’t miss the entrance and there were lots of signs telling me to keep my windows up and no recording anything on site. Honestly, I’ve seen much less signage on motorway contraflows and much less on diversions, so I was impressed.

There were plenty of workers on site, at least 3 per stopping point and they communicate by holding up signs. The first thing that struck me was that they were in minimal PPE, just gloves and a surgical mask.  Considering they’re dealing with people who are suspected of having coronavirus, I would’ve expected hazmat suits but nope, it’s the bare minimum.

The one positive thing I noticed was these people are a lot more relaxed than supermarket workers.  The few times I’ve been in a supermarket, a large proportion of the workers there are understandably stressed by being so close to the public.  I don’t blame them and have a lot of respect for them for putting themselves in the path of the coronavirus.  Having a choice between working and being paid but with the possibility of dying or protecting yourself by not going to work but not being paid, so you can’t pay your bills is no choice at all.

OK, that was another digression. Let’s go back once more to the tale, as doing the test itself shows everything that’s wrong with Johnson government’s handling of the pandemic.

My first stop was at the entrance, where they held up a sign telling me to keep my windows up and turn off any dash cams. Once I’d nodded my agreement I then had to drive to the first test point.  When I’d stopped there one of the staff held up a sign telling me to ring a number for a phone one of the other staff was holding.  Then via the phone call they walked me through getting the kit.  They asked me if I had hand sanitiser and tissues and when I held up the antiseptic hand wipes they waved them away and told me I’d have to wear gloves.  So why the email said antiseptic wipes would be OK is beyond my guess.  Then I had to lower my passenger window and they dropped the kit and the gloves onto the passenger seat.  I watched one of the gloves fall to the passenger footwell floor and a shrugged apology from the staff member who had misjudged the drop before I was waved off to park and do the test.

Having one of the gloves drop onto the passenger footwell but was only met with an apology for missing the seat doesn’t really cut it in the confidence stakes. I don’t know about you but having to use a glove that has been lying on the floor where feet have been doesn’t seem very hygienic or sterile to me but obviously I’m wrong.

I’m also calling process failure for the Test Receipt Card – As you would expect from a process that’s not actually very good at getting the details right, they spelt my name wrong.

Apart from when they drop the test kit on the seat and when you have to drop the completed Covid-19 test in the collection bin, you have to have your windows up all the time you’re on the site.  If it’s hot (or in my case the day was humid) your choice is to have the engine running and your air-con on or swelter quietly.  I sweltered, as I couldn’t force myself to keep the car engine running whilst the car was stationary.

When I parked up and checked the kit (they didn’t tell me to put the gloves on before I touched the kit) the instructions inside the bag told me to put the gloves on before I opened the kit, so oops – another process failure.

Then when I went to put the gloves on I discovered they’re the cheap, unpowdered variety which are a pain to put on at the best of times and in a sweltering car with clammy hands when you can’t drop the windows, it’s almost impossible. I got them on as well as i could but the finger tips of the gloves were a good couple of inches from the tips of my fingers. Making life difficult to save a penny.

Now after going through the test, I can see why there are so many false negatives,

and sub-optimal is being too kind.

When reading the instructions, I discovered the discrepancy between the vid and the kit instruction booklet.  The vid said to swab each tonsil 5 times, the instructions say swab both tonsils and the back of the throat for 10 seconds. Then it was time to swab the nose – the vid said rotate the swab 5 times, the instructions say rotate for 10-15 seconds.  Again, I found the thought of sticking a used swab with gunge on it from your tonsils pretty disgusting. So I put two crosses against this part of the process; the first is the conflicting information and the other is that swabbing the tonsils and back of the throat is tricky enough if you have a decent sized mirror – using the vanity mirror in the sun visor is really unrealistic.  It’s almost as unrealistic as asking you do the test yourself.  You can’t really see the back of your throat properly and you’re very likely to miss or trigger your gag/choking reflex, which means you’ll probably end up with the swab tip touching your tongue, which it’s not supposed to do.

After that, all that’s left to do is package up the swab and drop it off.  Putting the swab in the container was actually the most surprising bit of it for me.  You have to break the swab stick in half and I fully expected that to be as problematical as the rest of this amateur hour but it was the only bit that actually worked as it should. It does show you how underwhelming the whole process was that I was surprised that breaking a Covid-19 test swab was the only thing I thought worked as it should.

Then I had to put the swab container and the pad in the ziplock bag and then put that in the bigger bag.  I didn’t have to put the bar codes on the container/bag as it had already been done, I can only assume the staff have a bit of time on their hands.  Which is very likely, I was there for 25 minutes all up and there was no one there when I arrived and only one other car arrived when I was there.

Finally it was off to the drop off point and another phone call to speak to the staff.  First of all they (finally) asked to see the QR code that was in the email but they didn’t ask to see my ID. Then they make you hold up the bag so they can check to make sure you’ve packed it properly (and I forgot to put the pad in the bag with the swab, which is to mop up any spills if you haven’t put the lid on – why they just didn’t put it in the bag before hand escapes me, since someone spent the time assembling the kit by putting the barcode stickers on the swab canister and the bag) and when they’re happy that it’s packaged properly, you get to lower your window and drop it into the collection container.

Once that’s done, you can leave but you’ve got to keep your windows up until you’ve driven off the site. I was so desperately in need of air that I wound the window down as I was driving out and the staff by the gate started gesticulating wildly for me to put my window back up.  We’re outside, I must’ve been at least 30 feet from them and they were wearing masks so the chance of transmission is infinitesimally small but I did as asked and as soon as I got outside and around the corner I stopped at a bus stop, beside the no stopping sign (which I don’t think I’ve ever done in my life before) and took a deep, steadying breath before I felt able to drive home.

So that’s it and it’s done. Now I wait for somewhere between 2 -5 days for the results and if it doesn’t arrive I have a phone number to ring.

Update:  It took just over 24hours to get the text.  It’s negative.

Vent Time

What were my impressions?  First off, I was disappointed to find it’s the usual amateur hour I expect (but hope isn’t) from any government Business IT project.  These days a successful project is one that goes live and they’re never judged by whether it works well or not.  Going live gets the supplier the completion payment.

This attitude has been prevalent in its current form since the Blair government started outsourcing the delivery of IT services. The fact that the confirmation email, the vid it referred you to watch and the actual test kit information were at odds with each other is a symptom of the sloppiness that infests a lot of projects today.

It’s quite possible that no one has noticed the errors and discrepancies as things like this are no longer tested before release.  It may be it was noticed and the supplier of the service told the government that fixing it would delay the release and (quite possibly) the government would have to pay to get them fixed.  These are all normal behaviours for a supplier of services and play specifically on the problem that suppliers don’t deliver until the last moment and rarely offer the business the opportunity or the facilities to test the deployment end to end before it goes live.

All the behaviours you can think of with a dodgy double glazing salesman are there with the multi-million pound contracts too.  It’s a people thing.

These days, a government department waves its hand and says make it so and the supplier delivers whatever it can get away with. The team responsible for the delivery on the government side don’t know what rights they have over the supplier, don’t usually understand project best practice (Prince2? bah, it’s Agile, innit?) and of course there’s always the delays and slippages which means the client is put between the rock and the hard place when it comes to release quality.

This is a prime example of the problem that if the government (or any customer of large IT service providers) don’t detail exactly what it wanted then they will only ever get what they asked for. In this case I’ll lay bets that the supplier wrote the contract and nowhere in it did it specify that the information on each channel (email, vid and instruction booklet) should match.

Along with proper end to end testing of the proposed delivery, acceptance criteria have been jettisoned by the current fad methodology for IT development called Agile. All implicit assumptions about the quality of the service and the user experience are bushed aside if not explicitly detailed in the contract. As I said above, usually the supplier writes the contract and there’s no way they will put any explicit quality requirements as quality costs money.

Then of course there’s the issue around the mechanism of the Covid-19 test itself.  There were at least 10 staff on-site during my visit (and only one other car that turned up as I was getting ready to drop off the packed kit).  It would been quite possible to have a staff member stand by the car and at a minimum do that Love Actually sign flipping thing to walk you through the steps but they don’t, you’re left on your own.

What would’ve been quicker and easier of course is if you could park up, walk whatever distance to a seat (even in the open) and have them do it for you.  That would require someone trained to take swabs though, which is a cost that the supplier of this service would find an anathema as they’re not a public service, they’re in the business of making as much profit as possible.

With hindsight, I wish I’d done the at home self-test.  I might not have had an address to send it back to and it would’ve taken even longer for me to get the results than if I drove to the test centre but the test might’ve had a better chance of being done correctly than this test. If it comes back positive I’ll be surprised and if it comes back negative I won’t be, no matter what my Covid-19 status actually is.

All up, this testing regime seems to be more about transferring money to the private sector and being seen to be doing testing, rather than actually wanting proper testing done to be able to action the results. If 30% of tests are giving a wrong answer but that wrong answer suits the government’s agenda, we’re talking political opportunism, not a committent to protecting the population.

Why do I think that? Because the local councils aren’t involved in this nor are they involved in the tracing effort triggered by positive results.  Since they have the processes and procedures already in place for this very thing, it would be more cost effective and would have better outcomes if the money given to these consultancies to provide the ‘service’ had been given to the councils instead, you have to ask yourself why they would chose the worst option.

I did ask myself that question and I don’t like the conclusion I drew.  Yet again the Johnson government is risking people’s lives just so it can look responsible by throwing taxpayer’s money around like confetti without even a tender request being issued. They’ve bypassed best practice and are giving the money away without even a hint of due diligence – like when they gave a PPE contract to a company that doesn’t make PPE.

You may disagree but you’d better have some pretty compelling evidence to show that the consultancies are a better choice, as I’ve been looking and can find nothing that holds up to scrutiny.

Pro-Tips for preparing for the DIY Covid-19 test

• Make sure you’ve read the paragraph in the invite email properly, including the info you need to enter for the reasons why you’re registering for the test.
• If you find the registration won’t submit when you get to the end, use another browser.
• Don’t print the email off if you can have the email open on your phone – it’s 4 pages long, for just a QR code. The contents would easily fit on 2 if they’d used a sensibly sized font. The screenshot font above is less than the actual size.
• Before you go, if you’ve got swabs at home, have a practice doing the swab to see if you can run it over your tonsils and the back of the throat without triggering your gag reflex or coughing.  If not, keep practising!
• Don’t forget to take your phone as you’ll need to make 2 (at least) phone calls.
• Use your air-con if it’s a hot day to cool the car down or you’ll swelter in the car.
• Be prepared to be disgusted by having to stick the swab up your nose after sticking it in your mouth.