Antibody tests which show that you have had a Covid-19 infection will be rolled out to NHS and care staff from next week. So what happens when you test positive? Carry on as before - and I should know.
Part of the job of a medical correspondent is getting involved. That means volunteering for medical trials, tests and so on. I forget the number of times I've rolled up my sleeve to give blood to illustrate some story, or gone into an MRI scanner to image my brain. It's what we call "show and tell" in the TV trade. So when home antibody tests were first in the news I set out to show how they worked.
The tests all vary a bit in how you perform them. All you need is a drop or two of blood, which you squeeze into a hole, add a bit of chemical and then within a few minutes you get your result.
A positive result comes, as with a pregnancy test, if you get two lines across the sample window. I did the finger-prick test on camera and was surprised, and pleased, to find that I was positive for antibodies. I've since done further reports on antibody testing and had the same positive result each time. You can see the photo - excuse the blood - of three positive results, although one of them does have a faint line.
Imperial College London are testing these finger-prick home antibody tests for accuracy and ease of use. One of the team there calculated that my repeated positive tests made it incredibly unlikely that I was continually producing a false result. In other words, it seems I have definitely had coronavirus.
So when was this? I've not had any symptoms in recent months. I'm rarely ill, but I did have a bout of pneumonia in early January. I was off sick for about 10 days and had a cough and a high temperature. I couldn't shake it off. My GP in Windsor diagnosed a bacterial infection and gave me antibiotics. These helped a bit, but in late January I needed another course of antibiotics. These seem to have done the trick. Was it really Covid-19?
I don't think so. The first confirmed case of coronavirus in the UK was in late January when two people from China fell ill in York. It wasn't until a month later that the first cases of domestic transmission occurred. Note that although I'd been reporting on the outbreak in China by mid-January, the farthest afield I'd been in recent months was Christmas in Brussels.
So I don't think I missed a story here - the first coronavirus case in the UK was not me. But after that I've had no symptoms at all. Not a cough, not a high temperature, smell and taste normal, and no aches and pains, headaches, diarrhoea, conjunctivitis, skin rash or any of the other possible warning signs listed by the World Health Organization.