'Huge relief': Waiting for COVID-19 test result weighed heavily on P.E.I. man

After waiting five nerve-rackingdays in self-isolation, the phone rang and Dave Brosha could finally relax.

The results were in he did not have COVID-19.

"Huge relief, just huge relief, not even for me," he said, "but just knowing that I wasn't an unknowing carrier or spreader of this to perhaps hundreds of people."

Brosha, a photographer from P.E.I., travels extensively for work and was in Iceland for two weeks at the end of February, then Ottawa, before heading back to the Island. A few days later, the same day P.E.I.'s chief public health officer ordered anyone who had recently travelled internationally to self-isolate for 14 days, Broshastarted getting a dry cough and other symptoms of COVID-19.

Brosha, who is in his 40s, said he immediately began to self-isolate, but couldn't help thinking about the hundreds of people he came in contact with before developing symptoms.

"We all think of it as being this thing that we could get, and we're scared of that," he said.

"But what I think the thing that really weighs on you is, if you start thinking or assuming that you do have it, who have you touched and who could you possibly unknowingly infect? And just really, the weight of that is tremendous."

He reached out to a few of those people, including a friend who had just had a baby. He called 811, and was deemed a candidate for COVID-19 testing.

Then he waited. And waited.

Two days ago he got the good news that he tested negative, but the ordeal has made him want to reach out on social media and share his experience with others to show the seriousness of the pandemic.

"I think it kind of shifts how you think about the whole thing."

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