COVID-19 test centres across the city are reporting a spike in demand over the past two weeks, with reports of long lines, and some people even being turned away.
The increase coincides with families gearing up to send their children back to school for the first time since March Break and others returning to work in person.
Banuta Rubess wasn’t able to get tested this week despite visiting two separate sites on both Thursday and Friday due to long wait times.
“These lineups were scary,” Rubess said.
She first visited the Toronto Western assessment centre at Bathurst and Dundas on Thursday evening, but after lining up for half an hour, she was nowhere near her turn, and said she was told she wouldn’t get in.
She then tried her luck at St. Joseph’s testing site at around 6:45 p.m. When she arrived at that site, which operates every day until 8 p.m., she was sent away by security due to overwhelming demand. People were still arriving by the handfuls, she said.
Rubess didn’t give up and tried again to get tested the following day. But when she arrived late on Friday morning, she was met with the same long lineups at both locations and decided to go home because she couldn’t wait that long.
“It was a bigger sinking feeling,” Rubess said, disappointed she wasn’t able to get tested two days in a row.
Gillian Howard, a spokesperson for University Health Network, said they are “experiencing long lines” at the Toronto Western site.
“When the lines are long, we do give people in the lines an idea of how long they will wait,” she said. “Towards the end of the day we also stop people from lining up at the approximate point where we can do all of the swabs for those lined up.”
To extend hours they would need “additional funds and staff,” she said, and will “work with Toronto Public Health and Ontario Health to determine whether the funds are available.”
Jennifer Stranges, a spokesperson for the testing sites at St. Joseph’s and St. Michael’s hospitals, said that similar to other COVID-19 testing centres in the city, both sites have seen an increase in demand.
On Thursday, 424 people were tested at the St. Joseph’s location, Stranges said. This is in contrast to 242 people tested a month prior on Aug. 7.
“Anecdotally, more people are coming in for tests who are returning to work, people that have received alerts through the new app and people who are visiting the elderly, immunocompromised or new babies,” Stranges said in an email.
Keeley Rogers, spokesperson for Trillium Health Partners, said their COVID-19 assessment centres have also seen increased volumes in the past two weeks, beginning the week before Labour Day weekend.
Rogers and Stranges both said that if people are still in line to get tested as centres close, they’re asked to return the following day. They can also book an appointment online for
Trillium Health’s Drive-Thru assessment centre.
The province’s COVID-19 data shows the number of tests processed in Ontario spiked significantly on Wednesday, when around 25,000 samples were processed provincewide, marking a 40 per cent increase from the previous day.
On Thursday, around 32,500 were processed — another spike of 31 per cent in the span of 24 hours. That’s the biggest single-day increase in the percentage of tests completed since July 28 and Aug. 5. Testing seems to spike around long weekends.
Dr. Erin Bearss, medical director of the COVID-19 Assessment Centre at Mount Sinai Hospital, said they’ve seen biggest spike in volume in the pandemic so far over the last couple of weeks.
“I would say we’re probably up by a third, maybe even double,” she said.
The assessment centre is only open in the mornings, but they were doing about 100 tests a day over the summer and are now averaging around 200.
It’s not clear why more people are coming in.
“I think people are out and about more,” she said. “I wonder if hearing that the numbers are going up has increased anxiety in some ways, if people are lowering their threshold to get tested just because they’re hearing that there’s more COVID around.
“We’ve been able to manage it quite well,” Bearss said, mentioning increased staffing to respond to the volume, drawing on a pool of staff physicians who can pitch in when needed.
They are also “troubleshooting” options to increase capacity, which could include extending hours, and increasing the space so more people can be swabbed at once....