Manitoba links COVID-19 test site options to vax status

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This article was published 27/12/2021 (1548 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As COVID-19 case count and test positivity records were smashed in the province, Manitobans scrambled to get rapid test kits made available at just four sites.

The protocol for how a person gets tested for COVID-19 at these sites now depends on vaccination status: if fully vaccinated and symptomatic, they will receive a take-home self-administered rapid test, outside of a random selection who will receive a PCR test. All unvaccinated symptomatic people will receive a PCR test, and some high-risk unvaccinated people will receive both a take-home test and a PCR test.

While this protocol is only currently at the drive-through Winnipeg sites at Nairn Avenue and King Edward Street and the walk-in site at 1 Research Rd., and the Selkirk site at 100 Easton Dr., all testing sites will slowly take on this method.

As of Monday, the current wait time for a PCR test result was four days or more as the provincial laboratory backlog swelled to 11,500 swabs.

Chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin has suggested healthy individuals under 40 who get cold and flu symptoms could self-isolate at home without being tested.

Dr. Glen Drobot, an internal medicine specialist at St. Boniface Hospital who has worked in COVID-19 wards, told the Free Press he felt the decision was a good idea that has come too late.

“Things seem very reactive and not necessarily well thought out, but more access to rapid tests and a system to get people tested is good,” he said Monday.

While Drobot acknowledged the policy is in its beginning stages, he hoped the process would be streamlined so the hours-long waits for tests that have become commonplace will be reduced and accessibility to rapid testing will be improved.

“If through the (COVID-19) test booking website or through Health Links, there could be a way to have a person or an automated menu system go through with a person, see what their symptoms are, whether they would actually be a candidate to have rapid test alone or the test plus a PCR, or PCR alone, and then deliver that test to those people,” he said.

“Today, we’ve got a bit of a snowstorm going on, and it’s going to get colder. So looking at the availability, and how people will get these tests, I still don’t think it’s ideal.”

Roussin said public health is looking at developing an online portal or phone line for people to report a positive test result from a rapid antigen test.

Asked whether rapid tests be widely available to the public in the coming days or weeks (for example for pick up at a pharmacy) Premier Heather Stefanson said Manitoba central services is working with the federal government to get additional supply.

“To the extent that we can get this out in a wider way for Manitobans, we want to work towards that; obviously, looking at protecting those most vulnerable,” Stefanson said. “To the extent that we can get more of these, we will distribute them more widely as well.”

Any changes should be made quickly — “Anything that we decide over the next two or three days can be very helpful for the next four to six weeks,” Drobot said — and should be focused on being as accessible as possible for people who might not be able to utilize a drive-through site or make a long journey to a walk-in.

“The logical place would be to have a pickup centre at the Main Street site, right? Where there are going to be more people who are socially disadvantaged, lower (socioeconomic status), BIPOC people, maybe who live closer to that area to pick up a test.”

Alon Grosman was one of those waiting to get tested at the King Edward Street drive-through site Monday morning. He said he didn’t know he’d have to come back for a PCR test and wait again, should the rapid test be positive.

“It’s 2 1/2 hours of fuel. Lucky me, I had the fuel tank, what happens if I didn’t? Fuel is not cheap anymore… there’s other places, but it’s not enough in the city, open some more places,” he said.

The province could be doing more to make rapid tests for symptomatic people more accessible, Grosman added.

“There’s lots of ways they could push it to people — either through family doctors, through pharmacies, places like that where you could go and do it much quicker than wait 2 1/2, almost three hours,” he said. “What a waste. Worst 2 1/2 hours of my life.”

Another person who went to get tested at the Research Road location, a woman who asked not to be named by the Free Press, said she and her husband were part of a group of 10 who were brought into the location at once.

When inside, she said a nurse asked how many of the people there had already tested positive through a rapid test; half raised their hands.

“I wanted to get the hell out of there right away,” said the woman, who had a sore throat and runny nose but hadn’t been tested yet.

People who had tested positive were brought into one room, everyone else was brought into another, she said.

Despite working in a school, the woman said she hasn’t been given any rapid tests or N95 masks via her employer. While she had heard some school divisions had received rapid tests from the province, the woman said others, including the one she works in, had received nothing.

“We were nervous and anxious… I don’t have any because the government didn’t give any to schools, and I was at work when they’re handing them out to liquor stores… And there’s none available online right now. I just didn’t want to be in there breathing the air with the COVID-positive people, I wanted to get out of there,” the woman said of the testing centre.

— with files from Danielle Da Silva

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca