We Got Swabbed In Day Street Park

Madeline Torres tilted her head back ever so slightly as David McIntosh stuck a nasopharyngeal swab up her right nostril for three seconds to gather the nasal secretions necessary to see if she has Covid-19.

Moments later, I sat in the same white plastic fold-out chair and stared ahead as McIntosh leaned in to push a narrow stick tipped with nylon up my nose.

Those two tests took place Wednesday morning at the city’s fifth and most recently opened novel coronavirus swabbing station and testing site at 1319 Chapel St. in the Dwight neighborhood.

Torres, who lives in Bridgeport, works as a janitor at the University of Bridgeport.

She had driven up to the Elm City Wednesday to get tested not because she was feeling sick, but because she fears she might have been exposed to a coronavirus-positive friend. She said she wanted to make sure that she is not asymptomatic and inadvertently putting at risk her disabled son, whom she lives with and cares for.

She said she decided to come to the New Haven site because her daughter had been tested here two days ago and had recommended her mom get tested as well.

I’m a reporter at the New Haven Independent. I’m not feeling symptomatic either. But considering just how many asymptomatic people there are in the world and how I still traverse the city on assignment on a regular basis, I wanted to make sure that I don’t actually have the virus and am an unwitting vector. And I wanted to know what it feels like to have a nylon swab stuck up one’s nose.

Spoiler: It doesn’t hurt. It just kind of tickles. More on that later.

The testing site that Torres and I visited opened exactly a week ago. It sits atop the basketball court in the Day Street Park behind Amistad Middle School and adjacent to the roofless, fire-damaged historic Walter Camp house.

Two dozen large, orange-and-white traffic barrels ring the perimeter of the erstwhile basketball court, where two basketball hoops still stand, with backboards and sans rims.

Two white tents are set up at opposite corners of the court.

The tent further from Chapel Street has two volunteers, dressed to the nines in protective gowns, gloves, masks, and plastic bag-shoes, who register and sign in patients interested in getting tested.

The second tent is where the magic happens.

A nurse volunteer, also dressed in full personal protective equipment (PPE), swabs a patient’s nose (three seconds per nostril). A second volunteer, called a ​“minder,” makes sure that the nurse disinfects the equipment safely in between patients.

The site is run by Greenwich-based doctor Steven Murphy in collaboration with the city Health Department. It is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Unlike other neighborhood-based testing sites now open in community health centers in Dixwell and Fair Haven, the Day Street site is entirely outdoors. Unlike the drive-through testing sites run by CVS and Yale New Haven Health on Long Wharf, the Day Street site is easily accessible by foot or bike.

And unlike all four of the other testing sites, Day Street’s definitively does not require people to have a dry cough, fever, or other Covid-19 symptoms before showing up for a test.

The city and Murphy are advising patients to schedule an appointment in advance by going to this website. In practice, the clinicians and volunteers at the site are accepting walk-up patients who register on the spot. The patients are in and out of the testing site within 10 minutes.

“We want as much testing as possible to be able to isolate the positive cases and get the economy back to where it was” before the novel coronavirus outbreak landed in Connecticut mid-March, said Ahmad Altajar (pictured), the clinical director of the Day Street site.

He said that testing at Day Street ​“is starting to pick up now that word is getting out that there is walk-through testing site.”

Altajar said that the site had conducted roughly 20 tests on Tuesday. As of around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, he said the site had already seen another 15 people come by to get tested.

Pretty much none of the people who were tested at the site on Tuesday or Wednesday had registered online in advance.

“We register them on the spot,” he said. ​“It’s no big deal.”

He stressed the importance of making available testing for those with and without symptoms alike.

“In order to control this, we need massive amounts of testing so that we can isolate the asymptomatic cases that are spreading the disease left and right without knowing,” he said. ​“People are not infectious disease experts. Even with social distancing guidelines, you’ll still need massive amounts of testing” in order to mitigate the spread of the virus before a vaccine is available.

Torres arrived at around 11:30. She was the only patient at the site, and walked right up to the registrar’s table to get signed in.

Volunteer Michael Eastman asked her for her ID, address, and an insurance card, and fellow volunteer Xanni Brown asked for a phone number and email address.

Ahmad said that the testing site collects that contact information so that a clinician or volunteer can reach back out to the patient three to five days after they are tested to let them know the results. He said the nasopharyngeal swabs are sent to and processed by Quest Diagnostics.

If a patient has insurance, Murphy’s clinic bills the insurer. If a patient doesn’t have insurance, then no bill is sent out.

After about three minutes, Eastman handed Torres back her ID and insurance card, as well as a small plastic baggie with a label bearing her name and address.

Torres then made the rope-delineated walk around the perimeter of the basketball court over to the second tent, where McIntosh, a nurse volunteer and New Haven resident, and Shanah Koplowitz, a volunteer minder and Westbrook resident, were waiting.

“It’s a little annoying, the swab,” Altajar said. ​“It’s an uncomfortable feeling, a tube shoved down your nose basically. But it’s not painful.”

McIntosh asked Torres if she had any questions, told her that she would receive the test results in three to five days, and then leaned in with the nylon swab.

Three seconds in her right nostril, three seconds in her left. Torres didn’t make a sound, or even grimace.

When asked how getting swabbed felt, she flashed a thumbs up and said, ​“Ok!”

McIntosh and Koplowitz then put away Torres’s swabs in tubes to be sent to Quest. And McIntosh wiped himself down with disinfecting CaviWipes.

Next up: Your intrepid reporter.

I looped back to the site’s entrance near Chapel Street and Day Street and walked up to the registration tent. Eastman and Brown took my contact and insurance information, and I was quickly retracing Torres’s steps to the swabbing station tent.

I sat down. McIntosh explained what he was about to do (that is, stick a swab up my nose, one nostril at a time, for three seconds each). I asked Koplowitz if she could take my picture as I got swabbed.

She obliged. I can confirm what Altajar said: Getting swabbed wasn’t painful at all. I felt a sharp, tickling sensation at the back of my nose. Even before I could register being uncomfortable, the swab was out. Then up my left nostril, and out again.

Koplowitz handed back my phone, and a tissue to wipe my nose.

Click here for a map and more details on the city’s five current testing sites.