Ontario is spending $1.07 billion to expand COVID-19 testing, case and contact management, along with investing $30 million to prevent and manage outbreaks in priority sectors.
Priority Testing Sectors
- Long-term care homes
- Retirement homes
- Schools
These are being put into place as the province prepares for the second wave of COVID-19 - daily new cases already exceed 400.
This funding is to help track, race and isolate Coronavirus cases, and part of that is to increase testing capacity to 50,000 tests per day. The province reached its initial goal of 40,000 for the first time on September 20, and then again on September 25 when 41,865 tests were done.
This is after the province recently announced the changes regarding who will be allowed to be tested, and released of new pharmacy testing program that launched initially today in the hot zones of Ottawa, Peel and Toronto.
Rules Change for COVID-19 Testing
Here is what the province has achieved to date.
- Establishing a provincial COVID-19 lab network with capacity for more than 40,000 daily tests;
- Establishing over 150 assessment centres;
- Testing long-term care home residents and staff in addition to the ongoing testing of staff and homes in outbreak;
- Providing up to 1,700 more contact tracers to support public health units in contact follow-ups through an agreement with the federal government;
- Launching a new, custom-built case and contact management digital system to improve data quality and timeliness and eliminate the use of the multiple tools being used across the province and the integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS) for COVID-19;
- Launching COVID Alert, the country's made-in-Ontario exposure notification app; and
- Launching a robust public awareness campaign to educate the public on how to keep them and their families safe, including targeted campaigns to young Ontarians.
According the province's press release, Ontario will strengthen continue to expand testing and case and contact management by:
- More Testing Locations: Working with Ontario Health, local public health units and hospitals, Ontario will expand testing locations based on local needs to provide Ontarians with more access to testing and reduce testing wait times. This will include adding more testing locations such as primary care offices, at-home testing for certain home and community care clients, and starting on Friday, September 25, 2020, in participating pharmacies. (not available in Oakville, Ontario)
- More Testing Options: Ontario will ensure health professionals can provide more people with timely and convenient tests by expanding the methods for COVID-19 testing. Less invasive collection methods, such as throat, nasal swabbing and saliva collection will now be used in addition to nasopharyngeal swabs to test for COVID-19. Starting this week, three Ontario hospitals are offering saliva collection, with more assessment centres offering this option in the coming weeks. The province continues to review innovative technologies, such as rapid and point of care tests, to ensure Ontarians have access to leading and faster testing options.
- More Testing Capacity: Ontario will continue to expand the capacity of the provincial lab network so more tests can be processed and testing targets can be achieved. This includes hiring more lab staff and professional staff and improving data quality through digitizing requisition forms and other automated features. As a first step, the province will increase testing capacity to conduct up to 50,000 daily tests.
- More Case and Contact Managers: Ontario will continue to add case and contact management staff to prevent the spread of the virus. There are currently more than 2,750 case and contact management staff active across all public health units tracing and managing COVID-19 cases, up from approximately 1,500 staff in the spring. An additional 500 Statistics Canada employees are being onboarded this month to assist with contact management and Ontario is hiring an additional 500 contact tracers. In total, there will be more than 3,750 case and contact management staff working to keep Ontarians safe.
- Better Health Behaviour Information: Ontario will conduct health behaviour surveillance to track adherence to public health measures across Ontario and to help understand how to better communicate the importance and benefit of continuing to follow public health measures.
Program Benchmarks
- Faster turnaround time for testing: 80 per cent of test results delivered within 48 hours
- Maintain test positivity rate under three per cent
- Ensure sufficient case management and contact tracing capacity to continue reaching 90 per cent of cases within 24 hours
- Compliance with public health measures (based on health behaviour surveillance data)
In support of these efforts, the province has also released new testing guidance to help focus public resources on where they are needed the most.
With the flu and cold season approaching and a potential second wave of COVID-19, these initiatives are necessary for the health of people as well as economy of Ontario.
