Get tested if you have symptoms, says Moncton councillor who got COVID

A Moncton city councillor is sharing his experience with COVID-19 in hopes of reducing stigma and encouraging others to get tested.

"I want to protect my friends and family and everybody should have that in mind as well," said Paul Richard.

Despite being fully vaccinated since mid-June, the 54-year-old came down with COVID in late September and is still recovering.

"I caught the virus or it found me," he said.

His symptoms have been mainly cold- or flu-like and he's had pressure in his head for the past two weeks.

"It threw me down," said Richard.

He went to the hospital Monday night, after waking up for a second night in a row with a sharp pain in his chest.

The pain went away, but his oxygen level was low — 91 per cent, when normal is 95 per cent or higher — and he was kept there overnight.

He is feeling a bit better, but said COVID is still "lingering."

"You think that you're good one day, and then the next day can be a bit of a setback."

Taking out the garbage Thursday was enough to wipe him out.

Richard isn't sure exactly how he got COVID.

"It's really deceiving, because you think you did all the right things," he said.

His best guess is that he picked it up during the weekend of Sept. 24-26, while driving hockey players between the Delta Hotel and the Superior Propane Centre arena for a Heart and Stroke Foundation "Hockey Heroes" fundraiser.

But event organizers had "exceeded" health protocols, said Richard.

"Anybody that was going in had to be vaccinated. ...Your temperature was checked every time … We wore masks. We had sanitizer in our vehicles."

"I felt completely safe," he said.

Still, a few days later, on Sept. 30, he woke up with a scratchy throat.

"A little while later," he started coughing, sneezing and feeling feverish.

When he developed a headache he became more concerned — because he doesn't usually get headaches — and he decided to get checked out.

He got an appointment for a test the next day, which was a Friday morning. 

All weekend, he kept hitting the refresh button, hoping to find out it was some other kind of bug that was making him sick.

But at about 2 a.m. on Oct. 5, he got the result he'd been dreading.

"I got up and I shouldn't have checked my phone, but I did. And that's when I found a nice red plus sign in the middle of the screen."

"I stopped breathing," he said. "So many, so many things are going through your head."

Richard said there was no way he was getting back to sleep that night.

He immediately started working on a list of where he'd gone and who he'd seen, checking his calendar and bank account records. He wanted to contact everyone, even if he'd been near them for less than 10 minutes.

It was tough making those phone calls, he said.

"The first thing I'm telling them is I'm sorry that, you know, you might have COVID-19 because of me."

Most people told him not to worry about it because he hadn't done it on purpose.

Others were obviously distraught to find out they may have been infected.

Richard felt responsible even though he thought he'd been taking every precaution.

One thing in particular he feels bad about is that he didn't self-isolate while waiting for his test result. He said he specifically asked about that when he went to the Coliseum drive-thru testing site and was not instructed to do so.

Some people who are fully vaccinated don't have to isolate while waiting for a PCR test result, said a spokesperson for the Health Department.

But that's only supposed to be if they don't have symptoms.

Richard said he also feels bad for exposing his wife to the virus. She's sick too, he said, but seems to be recovering more quickly than he is.

Richard's wife works at the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont hospital, but Richard said he's quite certain he's the one who brought COVID home because he developed symptoms earlier.

He said he's thankful both of their children have tested negative.

The thing Richard most wanted to share is that anyone can get COVID, so it's nothing to be ashamed of. 

"I think everybody has to know … as ashamed as I felt, you shouldn't feel ashamed … unless you blatantly did it wrong. But I didn't do anything on purpose."

He also stressed the importance of acting quickly to get tested as soon as you develop symptoms.

"If you have one, you better keep a lookout. If you get that second one, make the call or go online and get that test."

"I know it's hard. It took a while for me to get my answer back, but it's very important.

"If you can save anybody's life, if it's not your own, if it's somebody that you love or a good friend, it's very important."