Coronavirus at home: treatment, self-isolation, and CT not done

Veronika Bulyuk

"When a few months ago just an acquaintance of your neighbor's friend became ill, now the parents of close friends and distant acquaintances caught coronavirus in September. Only 1 handshake… At that moment, I caught myself thinking coronavirus can really affect most of the population. Including me." 

Today, our journalist shares her experience of transmitting the disease and explains what people coming across COVID-19 say and advise.

How it all began

Now it's hard to say exactly how and who infected me. Maybe it was a cashier in a supermarket or a passerby on a metro escalator. The official version is a colleague at work who had symptoms of weakness, runny nose, and a sore throat. My main occupation is the hotel business: I've been working in a 5-star hotel in Kyiv for many years. All sanitary norms are actually observed: the temperature is measured; the employers ask us about the state of our health every day; we pour our hands and surfaces with disinfectant almost every hour.

So my colleague interpreted his general condition as consequences of his long walk in the woods, but still, we kept the distance just in case. The only flaw in the story is the joint food delivery he ordered for us on Saturday to make the weekend at work more perceptible. Eating the gifts of Japanese cuisine together didn't alarm us then… But learning about his ill health, the management sent the two of us to undergo testing just in case. I had a weekend, so I canceled meetings with relatives and friends and decided to stay at home. With good health and the confidence that I couldn't get sick, I came to the clinic for a PCR test. The next day, my colleague received a negative result, and I got a positive one. That's how it all started.