Woman with coronavirus turned away from hospital
A 28-year-old Gold Coast woman who tested positive to COVID-19 has told A Current Affair she was “very surprised” at the treatment she received in hospital after returning home from overseas and presenting with symptoms related to COVID-19.
Alisha said when she first returned home from the US, she felt fine and was confident that she didn’t have COVID-19.
“I didn’t have a cough, I didn’t have any breathing difficulties at all,” she told A Current Affair via a video chat from her Queensland home where she is in quarantine.
“I honestly could have put money on not having coronavirus.”
Alisha went about her usual social life and met with family and friends, and is now concerned for their health.
“I was in contact with three different people for a couple of hours at a time and they themselves have gone off and spent time with friends and family,” she said.
Alisha said that she started feeling “a bit of a fever” and was “unbalanced” on Friday but brushed it off as jet lag.
She told ACA her symptoms quickly became more serious.
“It progressed intensely over a 24-hour period, it eventuated in me calling an ambulance,” she said.
When she arrived at hospital, Alisha said she was given pain medication and told to go home.
“I was just put in with the general public to get tested and they realised I had already been tested, and gave me some paracetamol and told me to get picked up and go home,” she said.
Alisha said it took almost a week for the health department to contact her and confirm she had tested positive to COVID-19, luckily Alisha had been self isolating by choice after her trip to hospital.
“I only just got given information today and so every day since Friday, since getting tested and feeling unwell it’s just been my own doing,” she said.
Unfortunately Alisha’s sister picked her up from hospital and fears she could have become infected on the car ride home.
“My sister came and picked me up and now she is quarantined, and she’s really sick because she was around me, that could have been avoided,” Alisha said.
Alisha believes she contracted the virus on the journey home as nobody she was in close contact with in America has any symptoms.
“I got five different flights to come home, internationally and domestic transfers and I got trains and buses, I got an Uber...” she said, concerned for the people she may have unknowingly infected.
Alisha said the health department was in the process of speaking with all the people Alisha was in close contact with since arriving home.
“They said they are going to get in contact with all the people I was in contact with, they are getting in contact with my GP, looking into the times I was there and what patients were there,” she said.
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