Like many people, Alberto Pérez of Madrid used a home test to discover that his headache and cold-like symptoms were caused by Covid-19.

Unable to contact his local health centre, where calls went unanswered and online appointments were booked up for the following week, he turned to a hospital emergency room for confirmation. After waiting three hours to be seen, health workers there agreed with his self-diagnosis but provided no PCR test to ensure a more reliable result.

“The nurse seeing me said that, because I had not lost my sense of taste or smell, I had the Omicron variant,” said Pérez, 39, who works as an online game developer in the Spanish capital. “But how could she know?”

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