Lateral flow tests - harder to get

[Sunny Clouds]

For a while now, I've been picking up LFT packs from a pharmacy, although I saved myself a separate journey a couple of times when in other places where they were giving them out, once on a railway station and once in a supermarket.

Today I tried to pick up a pack from my nearest pharmacy and the pharmacist led me over to some sort of wall display and said that if I want an LFT pack, I now have to use a smartphone to scan a QR code.  I realised I was on the edge of tears and left.

I went on the gov website and found that I can only get them from a pharmacy now if I  book an actual test.  I can still pick them up from a place that would be about three quarters of an hour each way.

Ah, but order on the phone or online.  If the packs are the same as the ones in the pharmacy, they wouldn't fit through my tiny letterbox, so what would they do - leave them on the doorstep?

I'll save you saying to answer the door when they knock/ring the bell.  I don't hear anyone that way.  People who know me know to keep an eye open for when I'm in a downstairs front room and knock the window.

Just one more way to make life difficult.

I suppose pharmacists could say it was a nuisance handing out tests, but I know from observing others that I'm not the only one to have looked round me whilst waiting and bought something.

I'd mind less if there was a click and collect or deliver to neighbour option.

[Sunny Clouds]

Out of curiosity, I looked to see what you have to do to order online.  You have to have an email address.  Well, ok, I can give them one, but there's a serious risk I'd mistake an email for spam and delete it.

Well, ok, so I can do it, but what about all those people that don't have internet access?  I know a couple who have no internet access and who struggle to use a phone.

Yes, I'm grumbly.  I just don't see the point in the additional bureaucracy.  Frankly, I'm not sure I can be bothered.

[Fiz]

Why are you wanting to do the tests? Do you have symptoms? I've never done a lateral flow test but have never had any symptoms prompting a test so haven't needed to.


I have a "doorbell" that vibrates the lanyard that I wear rather than makes a bell ringing sound or you can strap it to your wrist to vibrate there. When people press the "bell" it tells them to wait via lit up words. When I feel the lanyard vibrate, I press the button on the lanyard which then lights up the words "I am on my way" to the person at the door. Would that sort of system help you at all?


I found it because I cannot move quickly due to pain and could never answer the doorbell in time before the caller/delivery person had given up and left and this means that they know I am coming and they need to wait. I can be sat in my lounge now and my lanyard vibrates and the puppy runs to the front door with excitement, no doorbells involved!

[Sunny Clouds]

That sounds like a really neat gadget, and might well be worth getting.

I normally have very, very few visitors except neighbours who wait until I'm in my front room and then rap the window loudly.  It has the added benefit for them of a belly laugh as I jump, startled.  In terms of friends, I'd say in a normal year I have maybe two visits from friends, although last year I managed three, I think, all in the garden.  This year, I've had two.

But a gadget like that would be worth a go.  When I lived in a flat, for a while I had a few grocery deliveries and had a doorbell with a light, but then I spent almost all my time in the bed-study, the kitchen or the bathroom.  I didn't have many deliveries, though.  In a house, it's a different kettle of fish.

As for the test and symptoms, it's not the lateral flow test you do for symptoms.  If you have symptoms, you book the other sort of test (my mind's gone blank on what it's called) at a centre.

Lateral flow tests just help to make sure you're not carrying symptomless covid that you could pass on to others.  That could particularly be an issue if you've been vaccinated, because if you did get infected, you'd be more likely to be symptomless or have such mild symptoms you wouldn't tell them from seasonal allergy or whatever.  It doesn't help either that the main symptoms of the virus if you're vaccinated, particularly, I think, if you get the delta variant, are most likely to be like the common cold, with a runny nose and a bit of sneezing.  (Obviously, some people get iller than that even if vaccinated, I'm just talking about the mild end of it.)

[Fiz]

The yousafe doorbell is currently half the price I paid for it though for me it was worth every penny.


https://www.diy.com/departments/yousafe-white-wireless-door-chime-kit/1780420_BQ.prd

[ditchdwellers]

What an ingenious invention!
This would be handy for me when I'm having a nap. It takes me long enough to get to the door at the best of times,  and when I'm drowsy I'm even worse, so something like this would be really useful. The wrist strap vibrating could help to alert me as the dog just ignores the door bell!

[Sunny Clouds]

I've discovered there are some places still handing out LFT packs, but you have to go to the right place on the right day.  If I go in the next couple of days, there's a place I could go to, if I don't mind crowded buses and a crowded place to pick it up, because the sort of place they're handing them out is railway stations and shopping centres.

So if I want to keep checking I don't have the virus so I can self isolate if I do, so as to minimise the risk of passing it on, I have to maximise my own risk of getting the virus in the first place.

I suppose that there's a strong correlation between people who'd be more likely to pass the virus on (e.g. not believing it's dangerous, not understanding that you can get it symptomless and therefore pass it on without realising you've got it, or just understandably giving up on making sense of it all) and people who'd be more likely not to test (e.g. don't think it matters, can't understand the technology, given up making sense...).

On the local buses, roughly 2/3, sometimes more, of passengers aren't wearing masks.  Quite a few wear them to get on, then pull them down or take them off once they're on board.  Since it's my guess that most of those not wearing them aren't exempt, that would suggest that those that aren't are a mixture of people that don't realise they can still infect others even without symptoms themselves, or just don't care.

I will confess I find catching buses genuinely scary.

[lankou]

How to get lateral flow tests changed on October the 4th. You have to use this government website:-
More at link:-

Get a collect code to pick up coronavirus (COVID-19) rapid lateral flow tests - Get a coronavirus test - GOV.UK (test-for-coronavirus.service.gov.uk)


[size=3rem]Get a collect code to pick up coronavirus (COVID-19) rapid lateral flow tests[/size][size=1.1875rem]This service goes live from 4 October 2021. Until then you can pick up lateral flow test packs from a pharmacy without needing a collect code.[/size][size=1.1875rem]Use this service to get a collect code so you can pick up rapid lateral flow test packs from a pharmacy.[/size][/color]

[Sunny Clouds]

I suppose I'll have to go through all that palaver.  Though if the 'collect code' is a QR code like the pharmacist said I need, heaven knows how my printer will cope with it.

My depression is bad at the moment and one of the main effects is a sense that everything seems too difficult.  As I type this, I'm thinking of something - I'll use this to test whether my attempts to align my print heads have worked this time.

I know I seem moany.  I feel moany.  But at least I feel able to moan here where lovely Ouchers give me info, suggestions, ideas when I'm struggling.  What about all those people that can't get support?

That being so, I paused to look again at the link.  A fresh collect code every time.  My printer flushes through the print heads every time I switch it on.   Printing a single page is almost as expensive as printing a whole wodge of them.  I can afford that - I wonder how many people can't.

Come to think of it, I wonder whether any of my neighbours can't?  I think I need to gently ask.

I think it's a sign of the times that maybe our local community needs to think about a lateral flow bank alongside the foodbank, the clothesbank and goodness only knows what else banks.  Seriously.  If you can't afford food, loopaper, sanitary towels etc. and get help in your community centre or place of worship for internet access to claim benefits because you can't afford a phone or internet connection, how do you do this?

Sorry to ramble politically.  It just feels like throwing more people under the bus.  At least for me, it's just depression that's making it difficult.  Time was, I'd have been focussed on seeing what food I could pick up off the ground outside the takeaway.  I'm not joking about that.

[Fiz]

You're the only person that I know getting lateral flow tests without symptoms or whatever sunny. I've asked everyone I know and with the exception of the two A&E workers who have weekly tests, no one else is getting tested even though they're back in society. I wonder if less demand for the lateral flow tests has reduced supply? The A&E workers don't have any tests for 6 months after testing positive for Covid because it can apparently show up as positive for months so they don't get tested. That seems bizarre.

[lankou]

You're the only person that I know getting lateral flow tests without symptoms or whatever sunny.

My wife and I have been testing using lateral flow tests for some time now. There has been a requirement for a negative test within 36 hours of arrival at several motorcycle rallies/camping weekends we have been to.

[Sunny Clouds]

I have been having lateral flow tests for five reasons. 

1. The government has been explicitly stating that we should do them if we have no symptoms (and a PCR test if we do);

2. I have read a range of medical opinions that recommend them;

3. There is some research going on that suggests that whilst overall PCR tests are  more accurate, they may be less sensitive than lateral flow tests at picking up the delta variant.  Research is ongoing to see whether there are alternative explanations for people with symptoms getting positive lateral flow tests and negative PCR tests;

4. I have some symptoms such as runny nose and sneezing relating to seasonal allergies at different times of year (currently the tail end of the silver birch winged seed season) and an immune system reaction to a particular type of tree mould that varies according to weather (all year round when it's wet and windy).  I could otherwise rely on them as two recognised key symptoms of covid in people who are double-jabbed (as opposed to the key symptoms in unjabbed people);

5. I consider it part of my contribution towards protecting others, just as do other things to protect others, such as wearing a mask, and socially distancing where possible, and sanitising my hands before touching things like shopping trolleys and grab rails, and helping others to shield or isolate by collecting things like medication, groceries, other shopping etc. for them.  (I don't necessarily need to know who needs help, I get word of mouth in the form of a phone call or call over the fence or whatever "The woman at number such-and-such in wossisname road needs something-or-other." or "We're isolating,  can you get us our something-or-other.")

[Fiz]

I wasn't intending you to feel the need to justify why sunny 


Lankou yes I realise many events and appointments require them.