eMed Covid tests - best time to take? laptop or phone?

[rm1247]

I've read that many people had trouble with long delays in the past week or so with their eMed tests and wondered if you found that a certain time of day had less of a wait, and if it was better to log in on a laptop or a phone?

 

Thanks!

[SherriZ366]

1 hour ago, rm1247 said:

I've read that many people had trouble with long delays in the past week or so with their eMed tests and wondered if you found that a certain time of day had less of a wait, and if it was better to log in on a laptop or a phone?

 

Thanks!

Would like this information also.  

[BlueFish2000]

5 minutes ago, SherriZ366 said:

Would like this information also.  

Is this the Abbott home test? 

[arste]

We have found that early morning around 7 am works good.  But our last test was Dec. 16th before this outbreak.  It is much better to use a phone because most of the times the proctor wants to watch you do the test.  It is easier to position the phone than a laptop.  We have taken about 4 eMed tests since the first week of October and they aren't that difficult.

 

[pcur]

23 minutes ago, arste said:

We have found that early morning around 7 am works good.  But our last test was Dec. 16th before this outbreak.  It is much better to use a phone because most of the times the proctor wants to watch you do the test.  It is easier to position the phone than a laptop.  We have taken about 4 eMed tests since the first week of October and they aren't that difficult.

 

My son also found it easier to position his phone.  He had to fiddle with his laptop to get it angled correctly so the proctor could see the test kit.  After that he's used his phone

[mchin]

We did our tests late morning, early afternoon with no issues.  Used our cell phones as well. Only issue we had was the volume of the calls.  Had a hard time hearing the proctors.  My daughter took hers using the laptop and said the volume issue was much improved.  We did purchase a desktop tripod to use with our phones to hold the phones in place especially during the 15 minutes wait for the test to process.

[rm1247]

1 hour ago, BlueFish2000 said:

Is this the Abbott home test? 

Yes, the Abbot home test that is proctored by eMed. I ordered ours direct from Royal.

 

I saw multiple reports of people having trouble this past weekend with their tests, some taking over 5 hours to finish all of the people in their group. Wait times for one person seemed to be over 90 minutes, and if you logged out because of the app being nonresponsive your test was invalid. It seemed like most people were doing the tests in the day time, between 9am - 5pm. 

 

It was the first I heard of people having trouble, and concerns me as we'll need to test on either New Year's eve or New Year's Day, and couldn't get a backup appointment at a pharmacy because of the holiday.

 

I'd love to hear from anyone who tested in the past week and had no trouble with wait times (and what time you did the test). Of course, they would all be on a cruise right now. 🙂

 

[Clarasgrandma]

We used our iPad. The volume is louder on our iPad vs or cellphones. My husband used rubber bands to secure the iPad to an easel and we were able to angle it correctly. We took our tests shortly after midnight and got connected right away.

 

[BlueFish2000]

1 hour ago, rm1247 said:

Yes, the Abbot home test that is proctored by eMed. I ordered ours direct from Royal.

 

I saw multiple reports of people having trouble this past weekend with their tests, some taking over 5 hours to finish all of the people in their group. Wait times for one person seemed to be over 90 minutes, and if you logged out because of the app being nonresponsive your test was invalid. It seemed like most people were doing the tests in the day time, between 9am - 5pm. 

 

It was the first I heard of people having trouble, and concerns me as we'll need to test on either New Year's eve or New Year's Day, and couldn't get a backup appointment at a pharmacy because of the holiday.

 

I'd love to hear from anyone who tested in the past week and had no trouble with wait times (and what time you did the test). Of course, they would all be on a cruise right now. 🙂

 

I had wondered if there was a delay in their being able to respond - would like to hear others experience  too. Thanks for posting

[vegas7df]

I used my laptop and took the test about 7:15 am.  

[shavdog]

We took the test at 7:30 am...I used my 15 inch chrome book that I love....just make sure you have the volume up and ability to move the computer around forward and backward so the proctor can see everything....easy/peasy....have fun

[GJustice]

I use the laptop, sitting on the edge of my desk with a clipboard under it to make a "table" to place the test kit on. I DO have an external monitor attached and use that to "do" the test. I can open/close the lid to show them my ID and kit, then close it partway to "watch" the kit once I place it on the clipboard. USUALLY do them in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of the country is still asleep 🙂 

[Rmyoung]

We used multiple laptops it took about 2.5 hours on xmas eve. Easy process 

[paross4]

We tested at 06:30 Central time today.  Got right in, no delays.  Note that we ended up going to the Emed site and that routed us to Navica.  I could not get the Navica app to start the test.  We used iPhones and stuck them in a tennis shoe for positioning the camera.  Sound and video good.  Test took about 25 minutes start to finish.  (including the 15 minute processing time).  The email results were there immediately.  The results took about 10 minutes to appear in the Navica app.

Good luck.

[mein18]

17 minutes ago, paross4 said:

We tested at 06:30 Central time today.  Got right in, no delays.  Note that we ended up going to the Emed site and that routed us to Navica.  I could not get the Navica app to start the test.  We used iPhones and stuck them in a tennis shoe for positioning the camera.  Sound and video good.  Test took about 25 minutes start to finish.  (including the 15 minute processing time).  The email results were there immediately.  The results took about 10 minutes to appear in the Navica app.

Good luck.

When you got your results, did it come up with the correct time, meaning 6:30 am Central time?  I was planning on doing ours sometime after midnight and being we are in the Eastern time, didn't want it to show up with Pacific time which would be the date of the prior day here. Since RCL goes by date and not time, that makes a huge difference.

[paross4]

9 minutes ago, mein18 said:

When you got your results, did it come up with the correct time, meaning 6:30 am Central time?  I was planning on doing ours sometime after midnight and being we are in the Eastern time, didn't want it to show up with Pacific time which would be the date of the prior day here. Since RCL goes by date and not time, that makes a huge difference.

Our results showed up using UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).  Thus we see 12/27/2021 12:30:23 UTC on the paperwork.  So a test taken today at 00:30 Eastern time (30 minutes after midnight) would have showed up as 05:30 UTC 12/27/2021.

Hope that helps.  (if I am wrong - someone please correct)

[mein18]

51 minutes ago, paross4 said:

Our results showed up using UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).  Thus we see 12/27/2021 12:30:23 UTC on the paperwork.  So a test taken today at 00:30 Eastern time (30 minutes after midnight) would have showed up as 05:30 UTC 12/27/2021.

Hope that helps.  (if I am wrong - someone please correct)

Thank you!  That sure can create some confusion.  I wonder how that is treated by Royal? If they went by the date then, one could take the test later in the evening on the 3rd day prior and it would show as the 2 day date that they require.

[paross4]

28 minutes ago, mein18 said:

Thank you!  That sure can create some confusion.  I wonder how that is treated by Royal? If they went by the date then, one could take the test later in the evening on the 3rd day prior and it would show as the 2 day date that they require.

Royal uses the date.  (so I have seen/heard)   You could test late in the day (after 7pm) 3 days out from the cruise and it would show a UTC date of 2 days out. 

 

I tested this on a UTC converter.   If I put in 7:45pm tonight (December 27th) the UTC date and time in the converter shows 00:45 tomorrow (12:45am December 28th).   See sample and attached link.

 

Disclaimer:  You should be sure of all of this yourself, before trusting some guy on the internet with your travel plans.   If time permits, just test on the 2nd day out to be safe.

 

https://savvytime.com/converter/utc-to-est

 

[SherriZ366]

11 hours ago, GJustice said:

I use the laptop, sitting on the edge of my desk with a clipboard under it to make a "table" to place the test kit on. I DO have an external monitor attached and use that to "do" the test. I can open/close the lid to show them my ID and kit, then close it partway to "watch" the kit once I place it on the clipboard. USUALLY do them in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of the country is still asleep 🙂 

The idea of using a clipboard sounds good but using an external monitor sounds complicated and I don't have one.  Do I actually need an external monitor?  

[SherriZ366]

10 hours ago, Rmyoung said:

We used multiple laptops it took about 2.5 hours on xmas eve. Easy process 

Is that one laptop per person? 

[SherriZ366]

Here is a picture of my cell phone holder?  Could this be used to keep me

21 hours ago, Clarasgrandma said:

We used our iPad. The volume is louder on our iPad vs or cellphones. My husband used rubber bands to secure the iPad to an easel and we were able to angle it correctly. We took our tests shortly after midnight and got connected right away.

 

Could the turquoise cell phone holder, pictured below, be used to angle the phone correctly so the proctor can see what he or she needs to see? 

I don't have an easel.   

[DCPIV]

I just had my laptop on the kitchen table. I pushed it back far enough to make room for the test materials. When it was time, I just bent the screen down so that the camera was aimed at the table. I can't say whether that was more or less difficult than steadying a cell phone, but it wasn't difficult. 

 

As for wait times, I do hope they will come back down now that the holiday travel season is nearly done. 

[cruiselvr04]

When we did it there were 2 of us.  We just held the phone in the right position for each other.

[SherriZ366]

2 minutes ago, DCPIV said:

I just had my laptop on the kitchen table. I pushed it back far enough to make room for the test materials. When it was time, I just bent the screen down so that the camera was aimed at the table. I can't say whether that was more or less difficult than steadying a cell phone, but it wasn't difficult. 

 

As for wait times, I do hope they will come back down now that the holiday travel season is nearly done. 

I hope the wait times go down once holiday cruises are finished.  

[mein18]

We picked up an arm that clamps onto a table or desk on Amazon for around $15 so you can angle the phone almost as if you were doing a selfie. The proctor needs to see your face and your desktop at the same time. Be sure you get the type that grips the phone so you can angle it downwards.