Highlands Ranch resident Karen Holmes would love to know if COVID-19 is the illness that kept her restrained to her basement for three weeks. She will likely never be sure, though, because she wasn’t able to get tested.

While Holmes, 42, wasn’t tested for the novel coronavirus, her doctors told her they were going to treat her as if she had tested positive, she said.

She said she was told if she wasn’t admitted to the hospital, she couldn’t be tested due to a shortage of kits. Like many states, Colorado is dealing with a shortage of test kits, said state epidemiologist Rachel Herlihy. Increasing testing is part of the state’s plan for containment of the virus, Gov. Jared Polis has stated.

“I wish I knew,” she said. “I would love to know if I had it so I could be helpful to somebody else as well as know if I’m going to get it now.”

Her symptoms, which began March 21, were largely consistent with those associated with the virus, including coughing, difficulty breathing and headaches.

“I will never forget the struggling for air,” she said. “That was painful in every way, shape and form.”

Her teenage children and husband helped out by bringing her trays of food, picking up her laundry and emptying the trash. Even with her family only a flight of stairs away, Holmes felt afraid, she said.

“I had this fear of dying alone,” she said. “I didn’t want to tell my husband about it in the worst of times because I was afraid he would take me to the hospital... I didn’t want to be alone there.”

Once she started to feel better, Holmes found herself facing another fear: telling neighbors and friends. 

“I was afraid of being the leper on the block,” she said. “Mentally and emotionally, it has been hard.”