John Talbot – Retired NHS radiographer
My name is John Talbot. I was an NHS radiographer between 1978 and 2000. For the last 20 years I have worked in education, latterly as an academic and I have co-authored and illustrated a few books in the field of medical imaging. I also organise and co-present a large international MRI course. The last time I performed a radiographic examination was around 1997 and the last MRI scan I performed was in the year 2000.
Last November, a couple of totally unconnected events took place that required me to make a few life changing decisions. The first event involved my career. The university (a former polytechnic in Chelmsford) fell into financial hardship and was forced to close down many of the courses that my colleagues and I were involved with. One of these was the world’s longest-running Masters degree in MRI. The idea of presenting lectures on topics in which I had no interest or expertise didn’t seem like a good idea to me, so I decided to take early retirement. 2020 is my 60th year and felt it was a good time to bow out. I cancelled my HCPC registration and focussed on my other activities.
The second event, as we are now all painfully aware, was the emergence of COVID 19. On March 20th I was interested to receive an email from the HCPC letting me know that I had been temporarily re-registered to support the response to the COVID pandemic. This seemed like something I should consider. I now have the time to spare, however, my age and pre-existing health conditions place me in a higher risk category.
I was aware from the evening news reports that hospitals were not being supplied with PPE which certainly didn’t make me feel any more confident. You might think that this was a nobrainer and that I should just forget the idea, however, I also had reason to believe that I had already recovered from a COVID infection back in February. Hypothetically, I should have a degree of immunity.
At this point you may be wondering how I could have been infected so early. To cut a long story short, I spent the week following Chinese new year in Chinatown Sydney whilst presenting a course, took a total of 6 long-haul flights over a period of three weeks (60 hours in the air) and also spent a week in the Middle East just as the travel advice was saying “avoid the Middle East”. I tried to take precautions, staying in my hotel room and only venturing outside to present my lectures, but at the crowded airport in Doha, some of the 9,000 daily passengers were publicly discarding used n95 masks.
About ten days after returning from Sydney I exhibited all of the (now) well-documented COVID symptoms; breathlessness, fever, lethargy, mental confusion (even by my own standards) and four-week-long headache. I temporarily lost my sense of taste and permanently lost my sense of smell. I decided that if I could determine that this had been a COVID infection, I would now be ideally placed to work with COVID patients and promptly contacted the recruitment people.
A few weeks later I received a phone call and was asked if I would be prepared to work in one of the new Nightingale hospitals. I explained my position to the recruiter who agreed that I should wait for the antibody test (promised as being imminently available by the government) and asked me to get back to him when I had the results. I had also been approached by a well-known health charity who are working closely with the Nightingale hospitals to provide CT screening for COVID patients. So, I was raring to go, all I needed was a quick, cheap, simple finger-prick test. To date, I have not been able to get that test. I asked the recruiter about a test from the NHS, but he explained that this was not possible. This is understandable, because they have more important cases to test, front-line staff and patients. These tests are labour-intensive PCR tests, however, not the serum antibody test that I need.
I then approached my GP, he agreed, but said that I need to wait for “tests to become available”. This led me to do a little research into why tests were not available, and it seems that they were available, plentifully so. One of the largest UK testing centres is less than 15 minutes from where I live. A spokesperson for the centre recently announced that they had increased their test capacity, had additional staff, additional equipment and, notwithstanding government statements to the contrary, had all of the necessary reagents. Despite this, the spokesperson went on to say that they were spending most of the day completely idle, waiting for samples to arrive.
I then contacted one of the major manufacturers of antibody test kits. There appears to be no shortage of these either, but they declined to supply me with one because “we only supply organisations not individuals”.
My next approach was to look into drive-through testing. There is also a drive-through test centre just minutes from where I live, but this facility is only PCR swab-testing “key public workers” for current infection and is, according to local press reports, deserted for much of the day.
So in summary, I have immense respect for anyone working on the front-line right now, especially those of “advancing age” and those who may be at increased risk. I also feel frustrated, that antibody tests are not available for those who wish to return to the NHS but are in a high-risk category.
I wonder how many others are in my position. As precious weeks pass, there will be more and more of us. Not just NHS workers either, but in all professions. A relaxation of the lockdown cannot be adequately managed without testing. I think the government have woken up to this fact because today I hear that “millions of tests will shortly be available”, but I think I’ve heard that one before, here’s hoping.
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