Rapid-test process under evaluation

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This article was published 08/01/2021 (1749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Less than half of personal care home staff have participated in a pilot project offering rapid COVID-19 tests to asymptomatic workers.

“We’re going through an evaluation process,” Shared Health chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa said Thursday.

The province launched the four-week pilot Dec. 21 at Winnipeg’s Donwood Manor and Deer Lodge Centre, and Country Meadows in Neepawa.

It uses the Abbott Panbio antigen test, which can provide results in 20 minutes. It’s fast but less accurate than a conventional COVID-19 test that detects the genes of the novel coronavirus. Rapid tests are designed to detect COVID-19 only when large amounts of virus are present and more likely to give false negative results.

After three weeks, 786 samples were taken at the three sites: 120 at Country Meadows, 484 at Deer Lodge, and 182 at Donwood Manor.

There were just two positive test results, both at Deer Lodge, Shared Health testing data show. That works out to a test positivity rate of about 0.25 per cent, a Shared Health spokesman said in an email.

Donwood has nearly 200 staff in total, while close to 970 work at Deer Lodge. Both have had close to 30 per cent of staff participate in the pilot project, the Shared Health spokesman said.

Country Meadows, meanwhile, has a participation rate of approximately 44 per cent of its close to 200 staff.

Shared Health is talking to staff to “determine how they felt it went and if they didn’t get tested, why they didn’t get tested,” Siragusa said during an online scrum Thursday.

The evaluation will also ask what kind of resources were required to implement the rapid-testing pilot project.

In addition to having testing resources in place, staff are needed to conduct the tests, information and processes for staff to follow have to be developed, protective personal equipment has to be provided, a laptop to record results is required — as well as a dedicated on-site testing room and a system to track and report results.

“Once those results are in — we hope in the next week or so — we will discuss what the strategy will be to expand further, and how we are going to approach that,” Siragusa said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca