I was officially considered a swine flu suspect for a few days! Because of this, I had to quarantine myself (and immediate family) at home, until swine flu test results were available.
However, I received the test results yesterday afternoon, which confirmed that I do not have swine flu.

I had recently returned to Australia after a couple of weeks in Canada on business, and Canada is considered one of the countries at risk for swine flu.
When my flight from Vancouver landed in Sydney, all passengers had to remain seated while Australian quarantine officials came on board and sprayed the cabin.

All passengers also had to complete a health questionnaire asking if they had any flu-like symptoms, and when walking through customs in the airport, some officials were monitoring all passengers on heat-sensitive cameras, looking for people with signs of a fever.

A few days after returning to Australia, I came down with some flu-like symptoms (sore throat, coughing and headache), and had to quarantine myself at home until test results confirmed if I had swine flu, or if it was a false alarm.

A nurse dressed in full protective garb came around to take some swabs from my throat and nose for testing, and an information pack, along with masks and Tamiflu was left at the front door for me.

Initially, I received conflicting stories about how long it would take to get the test results, with one person indicating it would only take 8 hours, but someone else said it would take 48 hours, but they weren't sure if the pathology lab would be working through the (long) weekend.

However, I received the test results about 24 hours after the swabs were taken, and only had to be in quarantine for about 2 1/2 days.

Some people think it's an over-reaction, and this sort of response is unnecessary. I think the government and health department are doing a good job to try to identify any at-risk individuals, and isolate them until they can be tested for swine flu.

Prevention is certainly much better than cure, particularly given the potential rate at which swine flu could spread through the community!