Some Montreal COVID-19 patients are concerned they’ll be allowed to lift their mandatory quarantines too soon, and that they’ll be putting others at risk.
Melanie Fournier, a 42-year-old Dollard-des-Ormeaux resident, thought she was over COVID-19. After her two-week battle with heavy fever, coughing and fatigue, she’s feeling back to normal. Because she works in health care, she says she needs to have two negative tests before returning to her job.
To her surprise, the first one came back positive.
“I was thinking ‘oh my God, how many other people are walking around feeling fine?” she said. “There must be so many people, because not everyone gets re-tested.”
Meanwhile, her significant other, who also has COVID-19, barely had any symptoms at all. He lost his senses of smell and taste for 36 hours, but felt normal other than that.
Allan Drakes says his 14-day quarantine period is over on Friday, and that he will not be re-tested.
“I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m kind of upset at the fact I will never get tested. I’m planning to go and try to get a secondary test. I don’t want to make my mother ill,” said Drakes.
Right now, Quebec’s testing priorities are patients in hospitals, health-care workers and residents in seniors’ homes. People recovering at home are not a priority.
“It’s not a guarantee of 100 per cent, but I would say the probability of someone who has no symptoms for 14 days, even if they had a little bit of virus, is not going to be very infectious,” said Quebec Public Health Director Horacio Arruda on Thursday.
In an email to Global News, the Quebec Health Ministry said someone is considered “cured” based on the evaluation of the health professional designated to follow up.
That will be decided based on:
- the absence of acute symptoms for 24 hours (excluding cough, which may persist.)
- the absence of fever for 48 hours.
- a period of at least 14 days since the onset of the acute illness.
Drakes says even though he feels normal, he’s afraid to go out and spread the virus. He already thinks he gave it to Fournier, and to a friend after getting it from someone returning from vacation.
“I won’t be going out and about, that’s for sure. I’m going to stay home with my daughters until at least the end of the month just to be safe,” he said.
Fournier is still waiting on the results of her second test.
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