As the virus spread through Canada, provincial health authorities began limiting those who required testing to those with serious symptoms, pre-existing conditions, health-care workers or those who had travelled outside the country. Meanwhile, those with mild symptoms, such as cough, sore throat and runny nose, were told not to get tested and instead self-isolate.Dawn Bowdish, Canada Research Chair in aging and immunity at McMaster University, told CTVNews.
“The disadvantage to coming late to the game was that the entire world uses the same resources, the same swabs for testing people's nose, the same reagents for doing the test and, unfortunately, that means that there's been a huge demand on these resources and we simply don't have enough resources,” she said in a recent telephone interview.
In Ontario, provincial health authorities have not tested more than 5,000 people in a day since April 2, despite a capacity to test more than 13,000. Zain Chagla, director of infection control at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton in Hamilton, Ont., told CTV News that these changes will cut down on people who might be spreading COVID-19 while they believe they might have some other illness.
Solutions appear to be on the way, however. Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the government had purchased more than a million test kits, while Bowdish adds several Canadian entities are looking at new ways to ease the backlog of testing.
Can’t wait.