Badass SARS-CoV-2 Screening Questions To Ask Your Doctor
Why Patients and Care Partners Need to Ask SARS CoV-2 Screening Questions
Our public health officials now expect each of us as individuals to assess our own exposure risks to SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, public health has lifted most protections and restricted access to testing. COVID-19 briefings have been reduced as well. The best way for us to assess risk before going to a medical appointment is to ask our own SARS-CoV-2 screening questions.
To avoid disease caused by an airborne virus, “Job One” is to not breathe in the pathogen.
The best way to avoid the virus in indoor spaces is to minimize the levels of virus in the air we breathe by:
- wearing well-fitting, high-filtering masks and
- paying attention to air quality.
This is called ‘Source Control‘ and it includes protections such as mask wearing, rapid testing, protecting others while infectious, monitoring air quality, and filtering the air. These are what the badass SARS CoV-2 screening questions ask about.
Individuals have some control over some of these factors, but much of our SARS-CoV-2 safety depends on others. When we ask these badass questions, we may not get the answers we want to hear at first. When we ask questions before we go to a medical appointment, we will start a discussion that can create safer healthcare spaces for patients and professionals.
Ask the Badass SARS-CoV-2 Screening Questions
You can check out the “badass” list of SARS Co-V-2 screening in one of two ways:
Update: We also now carry our own portable NDIR C02 monitor and stay at appointments as long as the C02 level is 1000 ppm or below.
Check out the handout we use. You can copy the Google Doc and update it for your own needs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OqDwtbfGgta1HrBxDb9Ry4d4_WYRn7v7
Is Your Clinic or Medical Office Listed?
If you enter the responses you receive using the online form, they will be automatically added to a Google Sheets spreadsheet.
You can find the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ACQghRbF84e9EG4cVcNTpxWw7f5hVcm_z1VqA1n0lbY.
Please get in touch with me if you’d like some help getting a clinic or medical office entered. You can email me at Beth@NavigatingHealthcare.ca.
Resources
- For more information about safety guidelines for healthcare settings that are based on SARS-CoV-2 being airborne, please see the World Healthcare Network’s wiki here: https://whn.global/guidelines/index.php/Health_Care_Settings.
- Lancet article outlining airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2: Greenhalgh, T., J.L. Jiminez, K.A. Prather et al. Ten Scientific Reasons in Support of Airborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Lancet. 2021.; (published online April 15.)(https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext?s=03)
- Journal of the American Medical Association on why 5 days isolation with COVID is insufficient: Marquez, C., A.D. Kerkhoff and J. Schrom. COVID-19 Symptoms and Duration of Rapid Antigen Test Positivity at a Community Testing and Surveillance Site During Pre-Delta, Delta, and Omicron BA.1 Periods. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(10). (published online October 10.) (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797070)
