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Why Some People’s Covid-19 Tests Hurt More Than Others
Why some people describe the sensation of a test as uncomfortable while others say it’s painful
Millions of Americans have received Covid-19 tests since March — and countless more will likely experience the long wait at a testing site. While there are several tests for the virus on the market, the most common is a nasopharyngeal swab, which involves extracting a viral sample from the nasopharynx — the space between the upper part of the throat and the very back of the nose — and analyzing those results in a lab.
The test is a fairly accurate means of identifying the active virus, whether it’s in an ICU patient or the guy riding shotgun through the drive-through clinic. The only problem: Nobody likes to have their nasopharynx probed. Depending on who you ask, sticking a long, thin swab several inches deep into this chamber of secretions is surprisingly disagreeable, momentarily painful, or downright excruciating.
But how does it really feel?
The experience of getting a Covid-19 test has been described as having your brain “tickled,” or, alternatively, “stabbed” (though it never actually touches your gray matter). Lindsey Simpson, a clinical coordinator for the University of Vermont Health Network’s regional transport team, says it’s more like “laughing soda out of your nose — that warm, fizzy feeling.”
For Andrew Lane, MD, a professor of otolaryngology and director of the Johns Hopkins Sinus Center, “the closest thing might be if you were swimming and you get chlorine all the way back there.”
But sometimes, it’s a lot worse. “It is sharp, it’s stabbing — I can’t even really describe this feeling,” says Olivia Atwood, a 25-year-old hunkered down and quarantining in Boston.
“All told, it’s a very difficult area to swab.”
But that “is the nature of the beast,” says Joe Arrington of the San Antonio Fire Department, which helps conduct testing in the Lone Star State. The beast, in this case, is your very own anatomy. From the outside, the nose looks like a little nub of tissue, but inside, it’s a complex passageway that can differ dramatically between people. Most…
