Patients are pleading for coronavirus tests. Front-line doctors want everyone coming into the hospital to get a test, while nursing homes can only test people with symptoms. Ontario has a backlog of tests one day and an excess capacity the next. How did this happen?
When did Canada’s coronavirus testing go off the rails?
The first clues were evident back on Jan. 24, the day after Wuhan, China, was locked down.
“We’re ready, we’re prepared.”
Those were the confident words from Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health in a news briefing that day. The province already had a “specific and reliable” coronavirus test that could deliver results in 24 hours.
The public message was clear. We’ve got this. After all, Ontario had survived SARS.
“Folks, it will still be business as normal,” said Peter Donnelly, head of Public Health Ontario, at the same briefing.
Through the unforgiving lens of hindsight, they could not have been more wrong.
It’s now brutally clear that SARS was just a warm-up — that roughly as many Canadians would die in just the first few weeks of this pandemic than in the entire SARS outbreak.
And a critical weapon in the battle, laboratory testing, became log-jammed in the opening days.
One week after the province closed schools, shops and prohibited large gatherings, many labs were overwhelmed.
By the first weekend, Ontario had a backlog of more than 7,200 tests. B.C. also reported a backlog, as did Alberta, Quebec and Manitoba.
Almost immediately, provinces began restricting who could be tested — limiting it to front-line health-care workers, people with severe symptoms and those who work with vulnerable groups.
Over the past week, the backlogs have cleared, but restrictions on testing still remain in most parts of Canada.
And the hard truth is that testing will continue to be limited, even in Ontario which has just announced it will soon be able to test 19,000 people a day.
“Even when we’re at 19,000 tests a day we’re not going to be able to test everybody and that would be the same in every other jurisdiction,” said Vanessa Allen, chief of medical microbiology at Public Health Ontario, the government agency responsible