Nicole Abel, 29, assumed it was just a sore throat, the first symptom she always gets at the start of a cold. The Clapham-based marketing executive decided to plough on and go ahead with her weekend plans, telling friends she was probably just run-down after a busy work trip in Canada.
It was only four days into her return to London that Abel decided to take a Covid test, “just in case”, because she’d been on a plane and had some free tests lying around. “It really shocked me,” she says, when she tested positive. “I hadn’t even realised a sore throat was a symptom.”
