I took an antibody test – soon I will know if I’ve had coronavirus or not

As a journalist and lifelong know-it-all, Holly Baxter simply has to find out if she came down with the virus and didn’t even realise

The fact that in a few weeks or months this might mean being able to visit my family back in Europe makes it worth it (Getty)

This week, I decided to bite the bullet and get the coronavirus antibody test. It’s something that’s been available in New York for a few weeks now – mainly available at CityMD outlets, which are walk-in centres you can find across all five boroughs every couple of miles – but I’d been holding off after reading ominous tweets about standing in lines next to sick people who literally keeled over while waiting for other appointments. I was slightly worried that my trip into any urgent care centre would become a sort of coronavirus guarantee: if you don’t find out you’ve already had it, you definitely walk away with it. So I stayed ensconced in my apartment until a few other friends had offered themselves up as canaries down the mine; then, when they seemed to still be alive and kicking, I decided to get on with it and go down there myself.

My fiance wasn’t interested in attending with me, even though we were both pretty sick in February with a flu-like illness that featured that telltale dry cough everyone’s talking about. His view is that the results change nothing, because we don’t know whether antibodies confer full immunity yet, and so what’s the point? My view, as a journalist and a lifelong know-it-all, is that I want all of the information available to me, whether it’s useful right now or not. For one thing, if it comes up positive, I’ll know how my body responds to coronavirus; for another, when we do find out what those all-important antibodies mean, I’ll already have the results to work off.

Yes, if it’s positive, I will be ordering a custom-made ‘I survived the coronavirus pandemic in New York’ T-shirt from the nearest willing retailer

Granted, you can still come up negative if you only had a minor form of the disease and your body didn’t keep those antibodies around; and no, I wouldn’t change my behaviour whichever way it goes. But if you can find something out in this pandemic with its dearth of useful or workable information, then why not? The illusion of control gives me a bit of a kick – and a trip down to the nearest CityMD counts as something exciting to do with my day in this strange new era.

The trip was as painless as any medical visit during an epidemic can be, which is to say mainly boring and punctuated by mild terror. I masked up, walked down to CityMD, forgot my insurance card, went back home, masked up again, walked back in the door, and finally managed to reserve my place in line. For 35 minutes, I sat down on a socially distanced plastic seat and watched bad American TV, too afraid to take out my phone and use it after I’d touched the communal iPads for signing in. Then I was taken into an examination room, handed a nasal swab and told to place my left arm on a tray for the needle.

Because of emergency federal and state laws to do with coronavirus, all tests are now completely free, including antibody tests. To a British person, that might sound unremarkable, but for anyone who’s used to working within the American healthcare system, it’s nuts. The idea of getting examined at a CityMD – the swankiest of all urgent care centres, where my fiance paid $120 (£96) out of his own pocket with insurance for a 10-minute examination of a muscle injury a few short months ago – for no money at all felt almost taboo. When they offered me a swab test for a current coronavirus infection as well as the antibody blood test, I said yes immediately because of this, making me probably one of the only people in the world who has agreed with relish to poke a 50in plastic stick into the back of their own nasal cavity.

A quick blood test later and I was back out on the streets of Brooklyn, feeling elated. Soon I would know if Covid-19 had snuck up on me or not. In three to five days, my online CityMD portal will update with the results. Even though they mean nothing, the fact that in a few weeks or months they might mean the ability to visit my family back in Europe safely makes it worth it; and yes, if it’s positive, I will be ordering a custom-made “I survived the coronavirus pandemic in New York” T-shirt from the nearest willing retailer.