WORKING ON COVID-19 CRUNCH
Frustrations mount over long lines
Groups of parents and children, some with chairs, food and toys, waited in a line that snaked through a chilly soccer field at Brewer Park Tuesday as frustration over long waits for COVID-19 testing grew.
Jasmine Cady arrived around 10:30 a.m. to be told there was no guarantee she and her children would get in before the assessment centre closed at 3:30 p.m. She planned to try again Wednesday and arrive earlier with her toddler, who had a runny nose. Demand for COVID-19 testing has steadily increased in recent days as children return to school and case counts in Ottawa rise to levels not seen since last May. As she walked away from the crowded park, a visibly frustrated Cady said the city needs more testing centres and longer hours, something Ottawa health officials are frantically working on with plans to train new staff and expand hours at the Brewer and
Coventry Road testing centres to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Local health authorities in charge of testing also announced they plan to end the drop-in system that has contributed to long lineups at Brewer and to begin scheduling appointments at the city's busiest COVID-19 testing facility. The Coventry Road drive-thru centre, which does not test children, already operates by appointment only. Its booking system was beset with glitches in its early days which slowed testing, but they have now been fixed, said local health officials.
Work is also underway to expand the use of mobile testing around the city and open new testing centres. But staff shortages could limit or slow the ability to expand testing in Ottawa. Many of the nurses and others who worked in testing facilities at the beginning of the pandemic are now busy at hospitals which are trying to catch up on surgery and testing backlogs, or working in schools or other facilities.
During a media availability Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Alan Forster, who is the vice-president at The Ottawa Hospital and is in charge of the COVID -19 testing strategy with the Champlain COVID -19 response committee, made a public plea for retired nurses and other healthcare professionals to help out.
“We are actively seeking healthcare professionals. The region's ability to expand testing is affected by human resources.”
As of this week, around 2,000 people a day were being tested in Ottawa, Forster said. That could go up to 3,000 a day with expanded testing hours, and up to 3,500 a day with the use of mobile testing to assist high-demand sites. But the timing of how quickly that expansion takes place depends on staffing, he said.
That is also true for the ability to process the tests. The current capacity at labs that process COVID-19 tests in the region is 2,500, Forster said.
Alex Munter said on Twitter that CHEO, which is in charge of children's testing at Brewer, has already tripled staff numbers at the assessment centre and will expand further as the centre's hours expand. But that depends on finding enough people to do the work, which Munter, CHEO's CEO and president, is pessimistic about.
“The hospitals are running out of humans to do this work. We are hiring more staff, adding hours and sites, redesigning processes. But with COVID-19 surging, it won't be enough.”
Munter said pharmacies should take some of the testing pressure off hospitals.
Premier Doug Ford and the head of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, Justin Bates, both said that an agreement to do so is in the works. The province is in discussions with pharmacists to allow them to do COVID -19 testing on people without symptoms in pharmacies. During a news conference, Ford said people should be hearing about the plan in the next couple of days.
Bates said a similar program has been successful in Alberta. “The goal should be to test every citizen eventually.”
But Ottawa's chief medical officer, Dr. Vera Etches, had a different message Tuesday — that, especially with growing demand, people should only get tested if they have symptoms. Although the number of parents and children seeking testing has increased dramatically in recent days, the majority of people getting tested in Ottawa have no symptoms, she said.
Just under two per cent of those tested are positive, Etches said, compared to between six and seven per cent early in the pandemic, when testing was more limited and far fewer asymptomatic people were tested.
Many parents took to social media this week to complain that long waits for tests and results can mean they have to stay home from work for days every time a child has the sniffles. Etches addressed that, saying she knows it has caused a lot of angst for parents.
“We know it is too hard right now to stand in line so we want to address that so that testing is an easier process and you don't have to take a full day off work.”
But she warned that parents should not take cold-like symptoms lightly.
“It is possible when you have cold-like symptoms that it is COVID-19, so we have to rule that out or else we will end up with an exponential rise in the community, and that leads to overwhelmed hospitals and an increase in longterm care outbreaks and deaths.”
The hospitals are running out of humans to do this work. We are hiring … but with COVID-19 surging, it won't be enough.