Family and friends offer advice about where you should go, sometimes unsolicited and you scour the internet for clues about where has the shortest test times. Eventually you give up and head out to the nearest testing site, unsure what the COVID gods have in store.

Along with many readers, Jack Vallis had a similar experience. A few weeks ago the data engineer from Adamstown had a sore throat and, without any official way of knowing beforehand, got turned away from four sites before getting tested.

So he decided to do something about it.

"That was my lightbulb moment, So I built a website for people to submit their COVID result times and their experience in queues," Mr Vallis told the Newcastle Herald.

"It was partly as a hobby but also because there was no easily accessible government website with this information and it seemed like such an obvious concept."

The website is a combination of interactive maps and graphs which show data on queue and result times. Users open the website to a map showing dots, which correspond with the location of testing sites in the area.

The dots are coloured on a spectrum from green to red depending on wait times, green being the quickest and red being the slowest.

"NSW was my focus because that's where I live but I'm currently in Brisbane and have been waiting on test results for five days, ironically, so I decided to add Queensland and Victoria sites," Mr Vallis said.

"I use the NSW clinics data set to update which sites are open daily and the next step is to add opening times."

Key to the COVID Test Times website is that all data is user generated.

Individuals upload information from their testing experience into the website, which Mr Vallis hopes will allow others to make "informed decisions about where to get tested".

The website has had over 200 submissions so far, mostly from Newcastle and Sydney.

"Obviously more people entering accurate data will be better for everyone. But the way I see it is that any data is better than what's out there at the moment.

"Recent changes to close contact definitions means that the need for PCR testing may decline. But if we continue to get 20,000 cases a day it means there's at least that many tests."

At the moment there are limited testing hours available in Hunter. Testing clinics at Speers Point and Warners Bay won't open again until Monday, with the site at Honeysuckle operating on reduced hours until then.

Testing experiences are still mixed, with the clinic located on the Charlestown netball courts - currently only open Tuesdays - having queues of "only about an hour" this week, according one attendee.

Hunter MP Meryl Swanson says everyone should COVID-19 seriously after she became one of the thousands of people in the region to test positive. She says she suffered severe sinus pain, sweats, a cough and extreme fatigue. Are you battling COVID-19 as well? What has your experience been like - the illness itself, the battle for a test, the long wait for results? Share your experience of COVID-19 by completing the form below: