Good News

It will be two weeks tomorrow that I arrived in Mexico, and just before my arrival Alejandro came down with COVID.  I had brought a home-testing kit with me that I was going to use myself after I arrived.  Instead  I gave it to Alejandro, and that is how he knew for sure that he was positive.  Fortunately he never had any life-threatening symptoms, but he felt quite miserable.  Gradually he started to feel better, and now he feels OK except for some lingering coughing and scratchiness in his throat.  His sense of taste is starting to come back too.  The home test that I had given him contained two swabs, test strips and test tubes.  So yesterday he took the remaining test, and it said that he was negative.  

All this time I have been by myself in the apartment that I rent, and I have not yet been to his family's home.  Alejandro isolated himself in one part of the house, and, thankfully, none of the family has developed any COVID symptoms.

Now that he has tested negative, the plan is that he will drive to the apartment tomorrow evening, and take me back to his house for a few days.  We will be cautious and still wear masks at first.  I found some self-testing kits in a nearby store, but they are the kind that use a blood sample rather than a swab up the nose.  I don't know how accurate those are, but he can take one as soon as we return to the house.  I figure that if he has another negative test, the probability that he is still contagious is extremely slim.  We can take off the masks when at home.

I discovered that a laboratory has set up a tent in the neighborhood park just a few blocks away from my apartment.  They are giving rapid COVID tests, and they have the results in twenty minutes.  Unlike the government sponsored sites giving free tests, this place does not have a long queue of people.  Tomorrow I am going to walk over there and have myself tested.  I feel fine, and I have been extremely cautious, but I just want to be sure that I do not have an asymptomatic case.  I would hate to carry the virus to Alejandro's family.

So, fingers crossed, it looks like this trip will soon return to normal... or at least as normal as possible during this wave of Omicron.