“I felt guilty, I felt shocked and I felt worried.”
Claire Byrne has given a detailed account of what it was like discovering that she had tested positive for coronavirus while self isolating from her shed.
For the second week running, the presenter was broadcasting The Claire Byrne Live show from her home after contracting Covid-19.
Speaking from live link last night, she said that she believed that she had a head cold, or potentially a chest infection. She said that she was taking her temperature regularly and that there was never a spike.
“The worst moment for me was that for three successive nights, I was in bed with a cough and I began to notice that I was becoming breathless,” she said
“I began to worry about that.”
Byrne’s symptoms did eventually lead her to getting tested at a HSE centre. She said that she was greeted by a nurse who led her inside to take a swab of her throat and nasal passage.
“When I was leaving the test centre I felt very comforted,” she said. “The nurses were so professional and so calm.”
'I felt guilty, I felt shocked and I felt worried' – Claire Byrne
Claire describes how she reacted to being diagnosed with Covid-19 #CBLive pic.twitter.com/jl9acNWhkA
— Upfront with Katie Hannon (@RTEUpfront) March 23, 2020
When she received her results a few days later, the broadcaster said that she felt shocked, but she also felt guilty.
“I got the result and I was told that I had Covid-19 – and I can’t tell you what that’s like,” she said.
“I went into guilty mode because I felt: how many people have I given this to? That was my big concern.
“I had been self isolating and following the guidelines, but before I had symptoms was I giving this condition to all of these people?
“I felt guilty, I felt shocked and I felt worried (…) I sat down when I had processed it and I began to make my contact list.”
Byrne said that afterwards, she was contacted by a member of the army who asked her to compile a list of the people she had been in contact with since she started displaying symptoms, as well as before.
Now, she feels as though she is “through the worst of it.”
“My symptoms have abated, I’m not too bad at all now,” she said. “I feel I’ve been through the peak of Covid-19 in my case and I’m glad about that.
“I still feel quite guilty about it and the people on my contact list who had to be told that they were in contact with somebody who had Covid-19,” she said,
“But I suppose that’s all part of it.”
