As part of an effort to ramp up COVID-19 testing in Montreal, six city buses will be turned into mobile testing clinics. Dr. Mylène Drouin, the city’s public health director, says testing will now target everybody who has COVID-19 symptoms or has come into contact with someone with the illness.
With 355 new cases and 45 additional recorded deaths in the past 24 hours, Montreal’s battle with COVID-19 is far from won, and city officials are ramping up efforts to test anyone who is showing signs of infection.
The city’s public health director, Dr. Mylène Drouin, announced Monday that, despite her assertion on April 16 that the rate of increase had begun to level off, the situation now appears to be getting worse.
“We are not lowering the epidemic curve,” said Drouin. “We can see a plateau and even an increase in cases.”
Montreal now has 16,606 confirmed cases. A total of 1,410 Montrealers have died from COVID-19 complications — most of them seniors who were in long-term care.
The number of people in hospital, however, is plateauing, Drouin said. Of the 1,055 Montrealers now in hospital with COVID-19, 137 are in intensive care.
Drouin said testing will now target everybody who has COVID-19 symptoms, such as respiratory trouble, fever and coughing. Drouin said health-care workers and anyone else who has had contact with confirmed COVID-19 patients will be tested, as well.
She said people who do not have symptoms should not be tested, as that’s not effective. She said businesses should not require employees to be tested before returning to work.
The Quebec government said earlier Monday that starting this week, it plans to significantly increase the number of tests performed daily, from approximately 5,000 tests to more than 14,000.
Among the strategies to increase testing o