At the start of March, I had a tight chest and a sore throat.

Nothing to worry about, in the normal run of things – but, boy, did I worry. Was this COVID-19? Was I spreading it? Should I self-isolate?

After the symptoms disappeared, my worry turned to hope. Had I contracted the best kind of coronavirus, the extremely mild kind? Had I won the lottery and acquired immunity at no cost?

Since the start of the outbreak, I’ve spoken to dozens of people who have had similar thoughts, sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances.

My mum is pretty sure she caught it from my sister’s partner in late December, at a time when the first cases were emerging in China.

A taxi driver told me he thought he’d had it in July last year.

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

Until recently, these speculations were impossible to check. An infection will leave antibodies that can be detected by a test, but getting an accurate version of those tests has not been easy.

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