How can you tell if you have the coronavirus? The quick answer is that you have a test, and the medical practitioners will let you know whether you have it or not.
The problem with this solution is that there is a shortage of test kits and they cost money. This means that only a small proportion of South Africans will be tested in the near future. For this reason, we rely on a person’s symptoms to tell whether they are likely to have the virus.
If they have a cough, fever, a sore throat or shortness of breath then they should get tested because these are the most common symptoms of the coronavirus according to the COVID-19 website set up by the South African government.
These are not the only symptoms that present themselves in cases of coronavirus. Sometimes there are other symptoms such as body aches and pains, nasal congestion or diarrhoea, but in some cases, there are no symptoms at all. Many young healthy people have been infected without displaying any signs of the disease.
This means that showing symptoms, or a lack of them is not a fail-safe way of knowing whether a person has the coronavirus or not – but they can be a useful indicator and should not be ignored.
Symptoms can be confusing when a person gets hay fever, a common cold or just seasonal influenza.
Hay fever is an allergic reaction to pollen or dust and can often present similar symptoms to people who have the coronavirus. People with hay fever often sneeze a lot, have a runny nose and itchy eyes – but they won’t have a higher temperature, one of the key indicators of coronavirus.
In addition, people who usually suffer with hay fever are familiar with the condition and if their symptoms appear to be within the normal range, then they probably have hay fever. Symptoms of hay fever are more or less predictable.
It can be very difficult to tell if a person has regular ‘flu or the coronavirus because they both can and often do present similar symptoms.
Quoted on the Heath-e website (www.health-e.org.za) , Dr Sibongile Walaza, a medical epidemiologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) notes that “One main difference in terms of disease presentation is shortness of breath, which is a common sign of Covid-19. Comparatively, the flu does not cause shortness of breath unless it has progressed to pneumonia.”
Testing kit for Covid-19. Photo: CDC (US)
Testing for Covid-19
There are two types of tests used to determine whether a person has the coronavirus. The majority of tests for Covid-19 can be divided into ‘swabbing’ polymerise chain reaction (PCR) or blood (serological) tests.
The swabbing test is when the medical practitioner gathers material by inserting an elongated cotton bud down your throat or in your nostril. Professor Janice Limson, director of the Rhodes University Biotechnology Centre, (RUBIC) says that ‘swabbing’ tests check for the virus’s genetic material in a person’s throat. These tests known as polymerise chain reaction (PCR) are more sensitive and more accurate than blood tests.
A PCR test can be labour intensive, complicated and should be processed in a laboratory. These tests can detect the virus even before a patient becomes unwell.
“The blood tests that are being examined now tend to test for antibodies (serological tests) that the body makes to specifically counteract the virus,” Limson said. These tests are conducted on finger-pick blood samples.
She explained that the serological tests show how the body makes antibodies to counteract the virus, but notes, “The body can take days to start making antibodies meaning that one could be positive but the antibody test will be negative.”
Blood tests are not helpful to guide decision-making regarding patient management, decisions around the need for quarantine, isolation or contact tracing. Serological tests are used for epidemiological surveys, but not for the diagnosis of acute infections.
Institutions in different countries are developing other types of coronavirus tests, but for the meantime PCR and serological tests appear to be the most common options.
