Forced to take a COVID test after visiting a hospital for flu

Just want to share my experience, here in Kaohsiung. I got flu and sore throat yesterday. No fever but I decided not to go to work today and get checked by a doctor, just to be on the safe side.

Went to the hospital reception to ask if I should go to ER or just get a regular doctor appointment. She checked my temperature and got me a regular doctor’s appointment.

I got the appointment, went to the doctor’s room and there was this old nurse standing outside. My mistake, I asked her for help to check which room doctor was in. She started asking me questions. I told her I had flu and sore throat. She asked me the location of my workplace. I told her near the Kaohsiung port. She heard “you came here on a ship”. She panicked. Started running here and there. Wouldn’t let me see the doctor.

At the time when I met her she was only wearing a mask. She then made me wait at an isolated place then disappeared inside the doctors office only to return in a full hazmat suit. I knew that was a bad sign.

There were 10 other Taiwanese waiting there to be checked by doctor. Many of them were sneezing and coughing. But only I was getting this “special treatment”.

Do you know those “point-collector” secretaries / special assistants everywhere in Taiwan ? They are usually more brutal than the bosses, and are always trying to impress the boss by being super strict by basically being an a$$hole. You know what I am talking about. Anyways, she reminded me of that.

The superhero secretary put on her suit and protected her boss from a sick alien.

Next she told me she will take me to ER to take COVID test. I told her I offered to go to ER already but was told not to because I had no fever.

She then went to the reception and yelled at the lady there for letting me come inside. I could somewhat understand their communication. The lady in reception kept telling her “he has no fever”. They old nurse said, “doesn’t matter”.

In between their conversation the nurse would yell at me whenever I swayed a bit or someone passed me. She keep yelling “don’t go near anyone, don’t move.” “Stay away from people” Bla bla bla

I think I was starting to feel like a South Asian ship crew member already.

(I told my wife that causal shorts, t-shirt and slippers don’t go well with my stature and complexion but she insisted I should dress more casually like some of my Caucasian friends. Well, lesson learnt!)

The nurse then proceeded to walk me to the ER. Meanwhile asking me questions, e.g “Where are your other colleagues? Aren’t they on the ship? Are they sick like you? “

I said, “I don’t work on a ship. Our company is located near the port”. “& All my colleagues are Taiwanese”. “ She quickly dropped the topic.

Then she said “you live alone?”. I said I’m living with wife and daughter. She said “call them, bring them here”. I said they have no symptoms and I had already self-isolated the moment I had a flu. She insisted they need to test too. I said they aren’t picking up the phone. She dropped it then.

Then she dropped me at the COVID test queue outside the ER. She spoke to the lady in charge there and left.

A guy there was pre-checking everyone’s forms and passports and travel documents while they were in line. When he got to me he made some fuss because I didn’t have passport & flight ticket. I kept telling him I am not traveling. He told me then I don’t need the test. He made me get out of the COVID queue and put me go in to the regular ER queue so I could get diagnosed.

While waiting there, I was again pulled out by the lady in charge of COVID testing. Meanwhile she and the other guy discussed about my lack of passport and ticket. She insisted to him that I needed to take the test (probably convinced by the old nurse). Then she helped me to fill the form:

  1. Fever = No (she checked)
  2. Diarrhea = No
  3. Muscle pain = No
  4. Nausea = No
  5. Cough = No
  6. Headache = No
  7. Lost of taste / smell = No
  8. Chest pain = No
  9. Shortness of breath = No
  10. Flu / Runny nose = Yes
  11. Sore throat = Yes

Then she took me to test area (an isolated place outside the ER) where it was lunch time now so I waited for about an hour before being called to take my test. .

When my turn came I noticed the guy who was going to take my test was sneezing and coughing. I wondered if he had been forced to test too. Anyways the guy taking the test was incredibly rude and angry for some reason :

Him : “Open your mouth”
Me : Removed my mask, & opened my mouth
Him : Not mouth, “Open your nose!!”
Me: Repositioning my head so my nose could look more “open”
Him : Yelling “Wear your mask!!”
Me: I put on my mask again
Him: Yelling “Open your nose!!”
Me: Lowering the mask again to my chin
Him : Yelling with a bulging vein on the forehead “Cover your mouth!! open your nose!!”
Me: lowered the mask so that it only covered my mouth, used my nose muscles to force them to open

He pushed the thing in my nose so hard. It was so damn painful. I felt pain in my entire skull. Especially left side of the head, left ear, the inside of nose and throat. The pain didn’t subside for an hour. Actually still feeling ear pain now.

I keep telling myself that he didn’t intentionally do it harshly just because he was angry at me. This is probably just how it normally feels after a test.

After the test I waited for an hour again in an isolated area outside the ER with other COVID test takers (don’t know if that’s safe). Then a doctor came and went through the entire list of symptoms with me again. I answered the same. He said I just needed to get some rest (ironic since they made me stand in the heat outside for 2 hours). He said he would prescribe me some medicine.

“But First I must ask you to take a COVID test”
Me: Yelling, “I just took it!!!”
Him: After confirming with others , “Uhm, Oh okay”

Waited another 30 minutes before another lady came with medicines. Told me to give her 800NT cash. I only had 600NT. She wouldn’t accept any cards. There was a 7/11 just across the street but she wouldn’t let me go there to get more cash. Just took the 600NT and left me waiting again.

Came back with receipt and some papers. Then proceeded to tell me that I need to “quarantine” for 14 days.

I refused, explaining to her that I haven’t traveled anywhere. I haven’t left Kaohsiung in 1.5 years. Not even been to north of Taiwan. I asked her where were the rules that say I needed to be quarantined. She handed me a paper with list of rules to follow.

Thankfully the paper was in English. The paper said, “As you have had COVID contact history…… “

(But I don’t have any COVID contact history whatsoever. I wasn’t in any cluster or know anyone or met anyone who was COVID positive or suspected of COVID. I just got flu, probably from drinking cold beer too often. )

Luckily I was able to point out to her where it clearly said that , “COVID suspected cases don’t need to home quarantine”, instead it’s just 14 days of “self-management”.

She said, “Uhm, okay!” and then let me go home.

Bottom line: My intention here is just to give a heads-up to everyone on what you can expect if you go to a hospital even with a single symptom of COVID.

I absolutely don’t want to discourage people from going to a hospital, but I’ll be honest that my experience wasn’t pleasant.

I was being extra cautious when I went there just after a single day of flu. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t go to a hospital until I had a fever or had been ill for 2 or 3 days at least.

Anyways, I didn’t expect that I would be immediately treated like a COVID suspect and forced to take a test, then be put in 2 days lockdown till my result comes back and be made to do 14 days self-management.

I am pretty sure I am going to lose two weeks income (maybe more) as I will most likely not be allowed to go to work once I tell my boss I need two days leave while I wait for my COVID test result. :pensive:

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Your treatment wasn’t acceptable, but I can’t see anything wrong with you being tested. Anyone who shows symptoms should be tested. A hospital just closed because an employee there went to work with a sore throat.

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Well, the treatment sucks and it does sound like you were given “special treatment” but I’m glad they tested you.

I had an experience in a hospital this week where I reported someone who was walking around with a terrible cough, and was told by the staff that it was fine because they had taken the man’s temperature and it was normal. :man_facepalming:

Have to admit that I’ve lost a lot of respect for Taiwan’s healthcare system in just a week.

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You wanted to get checked, you got checked!

Sounds like you had a cold and the doc wouldn’t have been able to do anything for you anyway. If you actually had influenza you wouldn’t be getting up, wandering to the hospital and standing around for two hours.

The treatment you got would have pissed me off however I wouldn’t be going to a doctor, much less a hospital to get checked out for a cold or even a flu for that matter.

When will you get the result of the test anyway?

Thanks for this note
My Rhinitis is coming back and I need meds and my friend warned me not to visit any hospital/clinics.

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I agree. Despite the circumstances, I don’t mind being tested. If I am negative I would at least feel better being around my family.

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I wanted to get checked because I knew I would scare all my Taiwanese colleagues with my sneezing, given the current heightened situation.

To be honest, I am okay now. I was upset somewhat with all the yelling and rude behavior. I have cooled down now. And, as I said before I don’t discourage anyone from going to the hospital if you feel unwell, just know that you will be treated as a COVID suspect, more so than locals.

P.S My neighbor and good friend (a Taiwanese local) was in the hospital too. I ran in to him. His daughter had flu and fever (39). Their experience was entirely different. Just got some pills and were sent home. No one was tested.

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God knows why Taiwan is still using those deep nasal swabs… Most countries stopped using it a couple of months into the pandemic. I’ve heard descriptions like “tickled my brain”, “brain swab” and now “skull pain”… Those are scary enough for me to not go get tested with mild symptoms.

The other startling thing is why they seem to care about your work (ship?). It seems like foreigner discrimination to me for sure. They didn’t even ask about more relevant things such as travel history to Taipei…

It’s these things that really make me feel like Taiwan hasn’t adapted to new learnings about the pandemic since March 2020. Sure, we had an aggressive quarantine strategy which worked for the most part, but testing methods, testing capacity and vaccinations have all lagged behind…

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They said it would take 2 days. I can’t leave the house at all in the mean-time. Even if I test negative, I have to follow 14 days self-management. Breaking any rule would mean huge fines, up to 300,000 NT$.

I feel that I may have to take a 14 day leave from work because I don’t see how I can follow those rules while still going to the office every day.

They probably stocked up and still have a warehouse full?

I had one in February last year when I had inexplicable flu-like symptoms. Brought tears to my eyes, but I tested negative for influenza.

Did they test you for flu ?
There’s rapid tests for all these things I don’t know what they are doing.

Since you are in the hospital it’s best you got the PCR test.

Maybe go the the rapid testing sites next time instead of hospitals . Although not as accurate but that experience sounds terrible.
They will haul folks off immmeidately to the hospital to get confirmed by PCR if positive though.

Is the rapid screening also the nose-digging test?

I’ve done a nose-digging test before (not in Taiwan) and it was also horrid. My nose immediately started gushing blood and was raw for like 3 days after. Almost passed out.

No. Someone just came to me while I was waiting outside after the test and gave me a bunch of medicines. 4 pills (3 times a day).

How do you know it was influenza and not the common cold? And why bother going to a hospital? Are you Taiwanese? Gobble a couple of paracetamol and vit C tablets. Eat some salad. Sorted. Schlep to the hospital when you have a cough and sore throat? Want a bag of magical mystery miracle pills?
Medical facilities are overwhelmed at the moment. No need to overburden them further with your runny nose.

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Typically they are saliva or blood tests where you just apply a small amount on a lateral flow test (white plastic wand thingy) and wait 15±20 mins for the result. However when I checked it seems many of these rapid tests for covid still use nasopharyngeal swabs.

They aren’t as accurate as PCR tests but they are a good start to try and rule you out from infection.

The antigen rapid tests give you very high confidence that you DON’T have covid if you test negative.

In people who did not have COVID-19, antigen tests correctly ruled out infection in 99.5% of people with symptoms and 98.9% of people without symptoms.

I’m actually quite shocked at this high confidence value which means they are very effective for screening out non infected !

The major drawback is they have a relatively high false positive rate but all positive rapid test results will be confirmed by PCR anyway.

Using summary results for SD Biosensor STANDARD Q, if 1000 people with symptoms had the antigen test, and 50 (5%) of them really had COVID-19:

  • 53 people would test positive for COVID-19. Of these, 9 people (17%) would not have COVID-19 (false positive result).

  • 947 people would test negative for COVID-19. Of these, 6 people (0.6%) would actually have COVID-19 (false negative result).

In people with no symptoms of COVID-19 the number of confirmed cases is expected to be much lower than in people with symptoms. Using summary results for SD Biosensor STANDARD Q in a bigger population of 10,000 people with no symptoms, where 50 (0.5%) of them really had COVID-19:

  • 125 people would test positive for COVID-19. Of these, 90 people (72%) would not have COVID-19 (false positive result).

The bottom stat is why they weren’t doing mass screening due to the false positive rate at low covid prevalence (>0.9% - pretty good for a rapid test actually ).

But I think on balance their decision was very wrong as we see now and they should have accepted this as a trade off in order to rapidly detect community spread and to monitor at risk front line individuals regularly. A SMALL PRICE TO PAY!

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I did gobble several pills. Back home everything is available OTC. So I bring a ton of medicine with me each year. I don’t go to Taiwanese doctors unless I am really sick. This time was an exception because everyone in Taiwan is on edge. I am the only foreigner in my company. I was concerned how my colleagues would react to my constant sneezing and sniffling (especially during their 4 hour long meetings).

Stupid me, I thought if I was questioned at work, I could at least show them some proof that I had already been to the doctor and been given medicine.

Getting a COVID test has had the opposite effect. The company now assumes I am a COVID suspect and are even more scared of me. I have already been asked by my boss to stay home “for a while…”.

I am not too upset though, I’ll just play some PS5. Hopefully they don’t cut my pay.

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So go to a local clinic. Steer clear of hospitals unless you’re on death’s door.

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That’s good advice! I wish I had gone to a clinic instead. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

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I don’t know how this compares to the throat swab. This was my third COVID test. I had two in early 2020 when I had to travel to take my dad back home.

Those tests were very easy to handle. Even my Dad did them comfortably. But this one was particularly nasty.

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