Yeah, I wondered if that may have been happening. The last thing these resorts want is to end your vacation with a mandatory quarantine. And it's possible he wouldn't even have tested positive. At the resort where we stayed, all of the employees are still tested twice with a PCR test. Several employees told us that they're all masked behind the scenes and indoors....and that they're doing this to protect guests, but also to protect themselves to keep staffing levels where they need them to be. Americans are largely the ones bringing the virus into the tourist areas, and they just want to stay healthy enough to stay open.
Everyone is different, but with me, I tested negative on Monday morning with a nasal swab...feeling fine....then felt that tickle later in the morning and tested again with nasal swab...again, it was negative, but I knew that I had Covid...my husband was positive and coughing his head off. He started with the exact same symptom. So, I did the thing the FDA advises against, I carefully swabbed the back of my throat and immediately tested positive. By the next day I was much more symptomatic and tested positive with nasal swab alone. There's a lot of talk about this....that we should be swabbing throats with omicron because for many people the first symptom is that throat tickle, which experts say means the virus is congregating mostly in the back of the throat to start. We'd pick it up earlier. I'm glad I did...it kept me from going into more homes later that day when I had covid.
One of the main reasons the FDA is against people doing this is that the nasal swabs aren't designed for swabbing throats...some kits are essentially a short stick with cotton on the end of it. Throat swabs are longer and very pliable. The concern is that people will swab the back of their throat, near the tonsils, and cause a gag reflex....and then possibly stab themselves with the stick swab. There's also some concern about false positives if someone had something acidic to eat or drink in the prior 30 minutes....as an acidic Ph can cause that to happen. Kids in the UK figured this out and were using drops of soda to give them a positive test so they could stay home from school....lol. I hadn't eaten for hours, so knew that wasn't the case. I saw a woman on TikTok who only tested positive with a throat swab, never with a nasal swab. She had symptomatic covid, and had it confirmed with a PCR test.