Reporter’s notebook: home test kit takes headache out of Beijing healthcare

When I woke up with a sore throat and fever in Beijing earlier this month, the last thing I wanted to do was go to a hospital.

Even though the nearest public facility is just a 15-minute walk from my flat, I didn’t have the energy to leave my bed, let alone endure the long queues, crowds and cumbersome procedures that come with a hospital visit. In fact, I suspected I had contracted the virus that was causing my symptoms from a trip to that very hospital four days earlier, as it was the only crowded place I visited that week.

Following a colleague’s suggestion, I decided to try an “at-home rapid test” for flu and other viruses. The service emerged on a few Chinese e-commerce platforms in the past two years, but no one in my family had ever tried it.

At around 4.30pm that day, I went onto the JD.com app and spent 69.9 yuan (US$9.89) for a test that screened for 12 common pathogens, including the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, influenza A virus, and the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacterium.

Within an hour, a middle-aged woman knocked on my door, wearing a mask and carrying a portable medical refrigerator. I put on my own mask before answering. She then took out a box containing a sample-collecting kit and sprayed disinfectant alcohol on the kit, as well as my hands.

“There are two cotton buds, both for throat sampling,” she said, passing me the kit. “After swabbing the throat, put the swabs into two separate test tubes and break each of the swab handles at the rim of the tubes, then replace the caps.”