zang
Senior Member
No Free Passes for being marginally competent during this crisis.
More than two weeks after Ontario Premier Doug Ford demanded a ramp-up in testing with “no more excuses,” the province still ranks near the bottom in Canada for the proportion of its population that has been screened for COVID-19.
It’s a worrying metric, some experts say, as Ontario will need much more testing if the Premier hopes to safely reopen even a fraction of the province’s shuttered economy as early as the May long weekend, as he has suggested. Meanwhile Alberta, which is already testing at twice the rate of Ontario, says it is expanding its testing beyond health care workers and high-risk groups to all Albertans with possible COVID-19 symptoms.
“I don’t know what it looks like when we try to slowly let people start to go out again,” said Janine McCready, an infectious diseases doctor at Toronto’s Michael Garron Hospital. “The only way to do that is if you can really aggressively test.”
Ontario has increased its testing since the middle of April, with the province now processing more than 12,000 samples a day. Ontario health officials also issued a new directive last week calling for more testing of residents and staff in hard-hit long-term care homes, where hundreds have already died from COVID-19.
But the province failed to hit its original goal of 19,000 tests a day by mid-April. It has since pledged to test 16,000 a day by May 4. According to federal data, Ontario has tested less of its population, measured per capita, than all but B.C., Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nunavut.
Ontario’s COVID-19 testing continues to lag
Province was forced to create ad hoc network of labs to expand its capacity, still trails most of its peers
www.theglobeandmail.com