A Hunter woman who visited a private hospital late last week while potentially infectious is still waiting for COVID-19 test results three days after coming forward for a swab.
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The woman, who did not want to be named, took her son to the emergency department at John Hunter Hospital on Thursday evening after an accident at pre-school.
She and the four-year-old then attended a Newcastle private hospital on Friday morning so he could have emergency dental surgery.
NSW Health announced on Saturday morning that a COVID case had visited the John Hunter emergency department at the time the mother and son had been there.
The woman and her family quickly lined up to be tested at lunchtime on Saturday and started 14 days of mandatory isolation while awaiting results from Laverty Pathology.
She is on tenterhooks wondering if she and her son have unwittingly exposed staff and patients to the virus at the private hospital.
Is there a quicker way for testing? See how the Rapid Antigen Test works here.
"While we're anxious about the result, we're not significantly impacted because we have to be in lockdown anyway and we're not symptomatic," she said.
"But my greatest fear is we've potentially exposed all the vulnerable people in the hospital as well as all the medical professionals to a possible case."
She received a text from NSW Health at about 10pm on Saturday then a call from a contact tracer.
"When we were getting tested at lunchtime we contacted the COVID hotline to let them know that we'd been identified as a close contact," she said.
"A contact tracer did call that night and asked to speak to my four-year-old because they didn't have a record of me, which is odd because I'm the one who checked him in on the app as a dependent.
"I had to give them my details again, even though by that point I'd received a text message as well."
The woman, who is on maternity leave with a 15-week-old child, tried unsuccessfully to call a Laverty hotline then received a Laverty internal number from a colleague.
"It turned out that, even though we identified that we were a close contact at the testing clinic, we weren't marked as a priority.
"They suspect it might come back by tomorrow."
Three-day waits for tests have become common in Newcastle as Laverty sends swabs to Sydney for analysis.
More than 87,000 people have come forward for tests in the past four weeks in the Lower Hunter.
Swansea MP Yasmin Catley, the shadow minister for the Hunter, said it was "unacceptable" that some people were waiting four days for test results.
"That's four days in isolation without wages," she said.
"Despite the Premier's daily calls for testing, the reality in the Hunter is that there's nowhere open past 10pm, despite our high number of shift workers in industry and health care settings.
"Those able to get tested have faced queues up to seven hours in some areas with no access to toilets, water or food."
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