A MAN who fears he has coronavirus has slammed health officials after he was told to go to hospital and sit next to sick patients while waiting to be tested.
Paul Godfrey called NHS hotline 111 when he noticed flu-like symptoms on his return from a trip to Milan, which is being badly affected by deadly Covid-19.
Instead of telling him to self-isolate at home, the call-handler booked him an appointment at his local hospital, where reception staff directed him to sit among fellow patients.
Three more coronavirus cases were confirmed in the UK yesterday. And Mr Godfrey warned: ‘The information the government is giving to say that they are controlling the situation is totally wrong, because it’s not being followed down. I could have spread and infected hundreds of people.’
Mr Godfrey, from Walsall in the West Midlands, returned on Friday from Italy and called 111 on Saturday.
When he sat down to wait as instructed at Walsall Manor Hospital on Monday, he was called into a foyer after ten minutes and told: ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I said I was only following guidelines from 111,’ Mr Godfrey told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
‘They panicked, they gave me a face mask in the foyer, while everybody else was looking around in shock.’
After having his temperature taken by a nurse in a hazard suit, Mr Godfrey was told he did not need a swab test as Milan was not on an ‘at risk’ list.
He was sent home to ‘carry on’ as normal — before being called back the next day to be tested in a closed-off ‘pod’ in the hospital car park by staff in masks and hazard gear.
On Wednesday, he received a call to say he had been diagnosed with a virus. But he was still waiting to find out what type it was yesterday.
The three Covid-19 cases confirmed yesterday brought the total number here to 16. Two of the new patients — one being treated in England and the other in Northern Ireland — caught the bug while visiting Italy.
The third — confirmed to have picked it up in Tenerife — is believed to have stayed at the H10 Costa Adeje Palace hotel on the Canary island.
More than 160 Brits have been stuck in quarantine at the hotel after four of its guests fell ill with the virus.
