This story was supposed to be much simpler, about what’s it like getting tested for COVID-19, especially for young kids. But then it morphed into something else: a window into the anxiety-filled, frustrating state of limbo that has become a hallmark of the Ontario coronavirus experience.

I first spoke to Canadian Daniel Tubb and his wife, Jael Duarte, on March 16, the same day their son was tested in Hamilton for COVID-19 after returning from Colombia.

The family is based in Fredericton, where Tubb is an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick, and Duarte, a permanent resident, is preparing to take the bar exam. With Tubb on parental leave, they moved with their two young kids — Diego, 5, and Elena, 8 months — to Colombia, where Duarte is from.

They returned to Canada on March 15. A few days earlier, Tubb, Duarte and Diego had started feeling unwell, with body aches, sweats and sore throats, symptoms they might have ordinarily dismissed. But with worldwide panic mounting over the coronavirus, and Diego now coughing, they made a snap decision to come home.

When Diego is tested for COVID-19, the family is told to expect results in two to four days. But then four days becomes six days, and then eight days and then 10. In the end, Diego and his family spend 11 days holed up in a Hamilton condo, wondering whether the highly contagious and possibly deadly respiratory virus is in their midst.

A spokesperson for Public Health Ontario declined to comment on this family’s case but said in an email Saturday that the “target turnaround time” for COVID-19 testing is currently four days — and two times as fast for “priority” cases. The agency is working with government and outside labs “to aggressively ramp up testing capacity,” the spokesperson said, adding that it is aiming to clear the backlog of tests, which surpassed 10,000 on Friday and has since dipped below 9,000, “within the next week.”

But for those anticipating test results, the wait can be agonizing.

This is one family’s experience.

Monday, March 16

5:35 a.m.: Tubb and Duarte touch down at Pearson airport with their two young children. They’re tired and anxious. It’s roughly six hours from Bogota to Toronto, but it feels a lot longer, especially for Duarte, who has the baby on her lap for much of the flight.

About half the passengers, including them, wear masks. Some are coughing like Diego. After a rough couple of days, he seems to be getting better.

In a few hours, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will deliver a blunt message to Canadians abroad, telling them “it’s time to come home.”

But for now, the terminal is quiet. At customs, the border services agent asks if they are experiencing symptoms of the novel coronavirus. Tubb says yes. She tells them to “self-isolate” for 14 days, and gives them a handout from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“Separate yourselves from others as soon as you have a symptom of COVID-19,” it urges.

8 a.m.: Tubb is sitting at the kitchen table in his brother’s two-bedroom condo in downtown Hamilton, tapping out an email to the city’s public health agency. He details the family’s travel history and symptoms. He is relieved to report that Diego’s condition has improved.

“Today his cough has gone down, so much so that he rarely coughs,” he writes. “My wife and I both feel better today, albeit she has a bit of a cough and I have a tender throat.”

He doesn’t explicitly request testing, but says he wants to know if they were exposed to COVID-19 so he can inform local public health authorities in Colombia.

The family had been planning to stay with Tubb’s parents, who live on a farm outside Belleville, upon their return to Canada. But Tubb knows COVID-19 is particularly dangerous to seniors.

Tubb’s brother moves in with his partner’s parents in Barrie. Before he leaves the condo, he stocks up the fridge and sends Tubb a message that makes clear he shares the same concern. It reads: “You. Can’t. Visit. Mom. And. Dad.”

Tuesday, March 17

10:45 a.m.: A Hamilton public health officer reaches Tubb on his cellphone. The officer takes the family’s history and decides Diego should be tested. They schedule an appointment at an assessment centre at 6:15 p.m.

Tubb and Duarte grapple with what to tell the five-year-old. They don’t believe in hiding the truth of the world from their kids, but they don’t want to scare him.

When they were packing up to leave Colombia, Duarte read Diego a Spanish-language pamphlet a friend shared with her on WhatsApp, designed to teach children about COVID-19. It discusses the importance of handwashing, and tells kids not to worry; that their parents will take care of them; and doctors are working on a vaccine.

The pamphlet includes a variety of emotions — conveyed through emoji-like faces — so kids can more easily tell their parents how the information makes them feel.

Diego pointed to the “nervous” face.

5:24 p.m.: The family sets out for the clinic, two and a half kilometres away. They wear masks they picked up from a pharmacy in Colombia, but Tubb feels uneasy about possibly exposing a cab driver, so they walk. Tubb, carrying Elena on his chest, is a few paces ahead.

They haven’t told their son about the test, but they’ve promised him he can play Mario Kart when they get back.

6:25 p.m.: A health-care worker meets them inside the doors to the clinic. She holds a clipboard and wears a surgical gown, mask, visor and gloves. It doesn’t matter that they’re late; the clinic is running behind.

A security guard wearing a mask sits in a chair nearby. Tubb worries about the workers, and hopes the personal protective equipment is enough to keep them safe. About 10 people wait to be registered for testing. They all wear masks.

The woman with the clipboard takes their information and hands Duarte a number printed on small slip of paper. She urges Tubb and the baby to wait outside, and all four of them do. They don’t want to be surrounded by probable COVID-19 cases any longer than necessary.

7:05 p.m.: Duarte and Diego go back inside, down a corridor to another waiting area, where a worker sits behind a reception window. Duarte holds her son’s New Brunswick health card against the glass. The worker says Diego is their first out-of-province patient, and they are figuring out how to process him.

Another worker wipes down one of the chairs, and Duarte sits with Diego in her lap. She is anxious and feels the urge to cry, but shakes it off when she looks at her son, who suggests they play “Rock, paper, scissors, shoe, tiger.” (The rules are a moving target.)

Outside, Tubb sings to Elena, who is getting fussy. There is an accessibility button that opens the door to the clinic automatically, but he notices that some of those coming and going take the handle in their bare hands.

8:10 p.m.: Duarte finally sits with Diego on an exam table in a small doctor’s office. A medical professional wearing protective gear stands in front of him.

Diego is calm until she tries to put the thin, 10-centimetre-long swab into his nose. Duarte tries to comfort him, promising Netflix and chocolate when it’s over, but he resists. She holds down his arms while the worker inserts the swab high into his nostril, twirling it for the few seconds it takes to collect some cells from the area where his nose connects with his mouth.

She puts the fabric end of the swab into a small vial containing a bit of liquid, and snaps off the handle. The vial will then be capped, labelled, enclosed carefully in a “biohazard” bag, and sent for analysis.

Outside, Diego tells his dad, “It was a like a tickle. But it wasn’t a tickle.”

9:44 p.m.: Back at the condo, Tubb and Duarte take showers and bathe the kids. They wipe down their wallets, phones, Diego’s health card . If Diego doesn’t have COVID-19, they worry that getting him tested has put them all at risk.

Dr. Paul Miller, a spokesperson for Hamilton Health Sciences, said he was unable to comment on this family’s experience, but said “appropriate precautionary measures are in place, including distancing and enhanced cleaning” of shared surfaces, including door handles, and a two-hour wait would be “well outside of what we’re aiming for or what others have experienced.”

“I’m very sorry if that’s how they felt coming out of the clinic,” Miller said. “Our procedures in the clinic are designed to prevent exactly that kind of phenomenon.”

Tubb and Duarte decide to restart the 14-day self-isolation clock.

Wednesday, March 18

9 a.m.: Elena wakes up with a cough. Tubb and Duarte think it’s probably a seasonal cold, the kind their kids have had dozens of times. But they can’t be sure.

Tubb is of two minds about the test results. If Diego keeps feeling better, and provided exposure to COVID-19 confers immunity, it might provide some comfort in the coming months to know he’s already been through it. However, if he is positive, that would likely mean Elena now has it, too.

10:21 a.m.: Duarte is talking to her brother, who lives in Bogota. The schools are closed, but her brother still goes to his office, and her mom and sister-in-law take the bus.

Duarte, Tubb and the kids had been living in a town up north, but they spent their last night in the capital. Normally, they would have stayed at Duarte’s brother’s apartment, but his daughters have had respiratory issues, and Duarte felt she couldn’t risk exposing them. She met her brother briefly, but they didn’t touch or hug goodbye.

Thursday, March 19

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8:32 p.m.: Duarte is on the phone with her mother. They don’t discuss Duarte’s decision to flee to Canada, but she worries her mom is angry, and doesn’t understand.

Before they left Colombia, Duarte had a dream that she was in a driverless car with her kids, waiting in the backseat for Tubb. She thinks it reflects her fear that, as a permanent resident, she could be somehow be separated from them in the pandemic.

8:44 p.m.: Diego’s cough is now more intermittent, and less dry, but Elena’s is getting worse. Tubb texts his aunt, a doctor in B.C. He fills her in on their travel history, Diego’s pending results and Elena’s symptoms. “No fever, but (fussy), and cough,” he writes. “We’re not too worried … Should we be? If not, what changes should make us worried?”

Friday, March 20

10:15 a.m.: The power goes out in the condo. For the half-hour it takes to be restored, Tubb regrets not going straight to his parents’ farm, where there is a wood stove, gardens to dig and a forest to explore.

He’s aware of his good fortune. They are home in Canada, with a comfortable place to stay and a steady income. But if there is a lockdown in Ontario, where do they want to be? Will they be out of self-isolation in time to get there?

2:45 p.m.: Tubb and his son are making chocolate cake for the boy’s stuffed puffin, who is called Puffinito They got it last spring in St. Andrew’s, N.B., a distant memory from a different world.

Saturday, March 21

Early morning: Elena has a barking cough. Tubb lies awake. He briefly considers taking the eight-month-old to the emergency room.

3:36 p.m.: Tubb’s brother arrives with a load of groceries, which he leaves outside the door to the unit. He also drops off Tubb’s car, which Tubb had left at his parents’ farm before they flew to Colombia.

Earlier that day, Tubb sent him a list consisting mainly of fresh fruit and veggies, as well as sausages, beer and art supplies for Diego. He’s an indoor kid and has been handling self-isolation fine so far. But he says he misses his piano and judo lessons, and his teachers in Colombia.

Sunday, March 22

6 p.m.: Tubb has a sore throat. He takes a bath and watches the fictional movie “Contagion,” about a fight to contain a lethal virus imported from Asia to the U.S.

Monday, March 23

4:10 p.m.: Tubb is on the phone with a public health officer, who is returning a message Tubb left a few hours earlier, inquiring about Diego’s test results. It’s been six days. She apologizes for the wait, and tells him turnarounds are currently seven days.

Tubb tells her about Elena’s symptoms. She says she thinks the baby should be tested and calls back later to set up an appointment for the following evening.

Tuesday, March 24

5 p.m.: The family is back at the clinic for Elena’s COVID-19 test. This time, Tubb and Diego wait in the car, while Duarte takes Elena inside.

Duarte is nervous, but she relaxes a little when she finds there is no wait. In the exam room, the doctor does a more comprehensive test — a single swab that can detect multiple viruses, including COVID-19. He examines the baby and listens to her chest, which reassures Duarte. The baby seems to be recovering, but is still coughing, especially at night.

There is still no word on Diego’s test results.

Wednesday, March 25

2:57 p.m.: Tubb picks up a message on his phone. To his astonishment, it’s a doctor, calling with Elena’s test results. The doctor says it’s “good news,” but a jolt of nervousness courses through Tubb, whose thumb keeps landing on the wrong numbers.

On the fourth try Tubb gets it right, and reaches the doctor, who delivers the news they have been hoping for: Elena does not have COVID-19. However, the testing shows she has a different virus, called parainfluenza, which is more routine than the coronavirus but can also lead to pneumonia.

Tubb and Duarte are relieved to finally have an answer, that Elena seems to be recovering and that this likely means it was parainfluenza — not COVID-19 — that made Diego sick. But however implausible, doubt still nags.

Thursday, March 26

2:42 p.m.: Tubb calls public health, which he realizes is becoming somewhat of a daily ritual.

Friday, March 27

2 p.m.

Tubb’s cellphone emits an ear-piercing blast as the Ontario government issues an emergency alert, warning travellers that they are “at high-risk of spreading COVID-19.”

He tries public health again, and again, an officer tells him Diego’s results aren’t in.

Saturday, March 28

4:05 p.m.

Finally, 11 days after Diego was tested for COVID-19, a public health officer calls with the news they have been hoping and waiting for: He does not have the virus. With Elena’s results, the information does not come as a big surprise to Tubb and Duarte, but the overwhelming emotion is still relief.

They feel lighter knowing they didn’t expose anyone in Colombia, or on their journey to the condo in Hamilton. The threat of COVID-19 is still all around them, but for now, their kids are safe.

Clarification – March 30, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version to make clear that Jael Duarte held her son’s New Brunswick health card against the COVID-19 assessment centre’s glass reception window. She did not slide the health card under the glass.