This afternoon the province announced that it has significantly increased testing and contact tracing capacity, allowing health experts to identify cases of COVID-19 and support efforts to stop the spread of the virus in the community, long-term care homes, and other congregate settings. In partnership with Ontario Health, Public Health Ontario, local public health units, and hospital and community laboratories, the Ontario government has developed an integrated laboratory system which has established the province as a national leader in daily testing volumes per capita.
The media release goes on to say that testing is being carried out in hospitals, long-term care homes, group homes, shelters, emergency child care centres, and other congregate settings. Once test samples are collected and received from frontline staff, patients, residents and children, labs are providing test results generally within 24 to 48 hours. On May 2, 2020, the province released updated guidance to the health sector to ensure consistency across the province, and to help guide decision-making on the testing of priority population groups.
To date, Ontario has conducted over 342,000 tests, with testing results being made available to patients through the user-friendly online portal. The portal was developed to help ease pressure on frontline workers, allowing them to focus their efforts on combating COVID-19.
The media release provides these “Quick Facts”
- On April 10, 2020, the province committed to expanding its testing capacity by doubling the number of tests processed each day to 8,000 by April 15, 2020 and 14,000 by April 29, 2020.
- Within 48 hours of implementation, the province’s COVID-19 Action Plan for Protecting Long-Term Care Homes significantly increased testing of long-term care staff and residents.
- The province’s COVID-19 Action Plan for Vulnerable People further expanded testing of staff and clients at group homes, homeless shelters, and other congregate settings.
- Ontario has a province-wide network of 23 laboratory sites working in coordination to further increase capacity and test turn-around times for COVID-19 testing.
- Ontario is now a leader in Canada in daily testing volumes per capita. Recent expansion of testing has the province’s per capita testing ahead of Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.
Yelish,I.(2020,May4) Ontario Significantly Increases Daily Lab Testing [media release]
