It's Friday afternoon, I tear open the RAT. I stick the clean swab up my nose, swirl it ten times around my right nostril. Sneeze. The I swirl it ten times around my left nostril. My eyes tear, I sneeze again. I dip the swab into the solution and swirl, dab and mix the sample twenty or so times. I carefully squeeze 5 drops into the applicator and watch the liquid fill up the indicator. 15 minutes later, the indicator is still lined up with the "T". Negative. Time to go out. I meet colleagues for drinks in an outdoor area before heading back to the apartment. By the time I get back to the apartment there's 7 people chatting, drinking, eating.
It's now Sunday, we have the Airbnb for another two days. NSW is currently reporting around 35,000 cases a day, down from the 100,000 or so, earlier this month. My phone flashes a notification, I've been added to a newly created Whatsapp group. Everybody who came over to the apartment on Friday is in the chat. The first message is "Tim got a positive result and I got a negative result". No sweat, one out of 8. We head over to the get a PCR. I test negative, my house mate tests positive. So begins the slow emergence of the cluster gathering that we hosted.
I immediately check into a new hotel and prepare to isolate. Over the next couple of days, 7 out of the 8 people from Friday night would eventually test positive to Covid. A week goes by, two RAT tests, two PCR tests later. I, the only one with the booster remains negative.
#whoisamanjaffari
