The bottleneck of COVID-19 test results are leaving some Lincoln residents in a needless quarantine.
Tested for COVID-19 at Bryan Health’s drive-thru clinic, Adam McQusitan, 32, developed a fever, headache and some cough on Wednesday, April 8.
“It kind of more-or-less tickles your eyeball,” he told KLIN News. “It’s a pretty unpleasant experience.”
Doctors told him to self-quarantine while waiting for the results could take up to two weeks.
“I was really frustrated with that expectation,” McQuistan said. “That’s very incongruent with what I was hearing with testing getting better, being more rapid and turnaround time.”
McQuistan said the biggest struggle was hearing his wife care for two young children while he was marooned in the basement.
“That’s super frustrating to know she’s up there running the house all by herself under that situation and the fact that she can’t go to work and see her own patients and do her professional life because of the situation.”
Bryan Health Officials told KLIN News they’d follow up with his test since it was outsourced.
Bob Ravenscroft, vice president of advancement, says McQuistan would’ve been told that same wait time.
“There were some early outliers in the testing process that extended up to two weeks,” Ravenscroft said. “Things have stabilized at that scripting would be changed.”
Now, he says the wait is reduced to 2-3 days.
Before McQuistan received his results Sunday, he was worried about what the future looked like.
“It’s tough especially thinking I’m only a couple of days into this and this is going to carry out another week-and-a-half especially if what I’m being told is correct,” McQuistan said.
In McQuistan’s case, the duration was longer than 2-3 days, but not near the two-week span he was told.
The wait, in some ways, was frustrating because he found out he tested negative for COVID-19 and told us it was the flu.