While Algoma has been fortunate in that there have been only nine reported cases of people testing positive for COVID-19 in the region, there seems to be a high number of ‘pending’ cases (individuals waiting for COVID-19 test results) when examined in the greater province-wide context.
The Algoma Public Health (APH) Current Status (COVID-19) website showed 230 ‘pending cases’ as of 9 a.m. Wednesday.
The Ontario government’s COVID-19 website showed 1,102 cases as ‘currently under investigation,’ defined as ‘samples with testing in progress’ as of 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Those numbers would seem to show Algoma has a high number of pending cases awaiting test results in proportion to the entire province.
“It is true. Ourselves and Sudbury, and I haven’t looked at other northern numbers today, but we have the bulk of the pending numbers and that is because of the volume that’s hit the laboratory system in the last few days,” said Jon Bouma, APH manager of infectious diseases, speaking to SooToday Wednesday.
The Public Health Sudbury and Districts website, as another northern Ontario example, shows 253 COVID-19 cases ‘currently under investigation.’
“What’s happened is we had a whole backlog of tests,” Bouma said.
“We’re seeing our turnaround time (the time involved waiting for test results to be released) go up into the weekly range, which is not good for public health purposes. We want to know as soon as possible, when someone is tested, to get the result back so we can act upon it (if a person tests positive) or tell that person not to worry, you don’t have COVID but do the appropriate thing and stay home (if a person tests negative).”
Bouma said because the local lab system had been getting bogged down with the number of samples coming in, “they brought on other laboratories, private labs like LifeLabs, university labs and even the public health lab in Timmins to do testing, so we’re seeing our turnaround time decreasing.”
The extra help is now appearing to make a difference, Bouma said.
“We had someone tested just on Monday and we had the result back today (the test came back negative)...we were seeing the turnaround time go down, which is positive news.”
“I expect to see that bulge of over 200 pending go down substantially in the next couple of days, and we’re seeing batches of negatives come in now,” Bouma said, adding the nature of the tests show positives quicker than negatives.
“Two or three days is our turnaround time currently (a change from weekly), so that’s pretty good and we’re hoping it gets better yet as they bring more labs on.”
Bouma said he is encouraged by Premier Doug Ford’s Wednesday news conference, in which the premier called for the province to start testing "everyone possible" for COVID-19 now that Ontario has the capacity to test as many as 13,000 people per day.
So far, health officials have put priority on testing health care workers, long-term care staff and long-term care home residents, as well as those returning to Canada after traveling to foreign lands.
“I expect...we’re going to see more labs, more tests, more swabs available. This will be ramped up even further, because Ontario hasn’t been testing as much as some other provinces,” Bouma said.
“We hope to see that changed locally so that anyone that needs a test can get a test. We’re not seeing a lot of illness in Algoma right now but we know that may change and we want to have swabs ready for those, for the surge that may come.”
In addition, the APH Current Status (COVID-19) website showed 666 people have been tested for COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. Wednesday.
For some, that is a low number and a cause for concern, given the Sault’s population of 73,000.
Testing is carried out at the COVID-19 Assessment Centre in the former Kal Tire location at 165 Drive In Rd., located near Sault Area Hospital (SAH), a partnership between the hospital, APH and the Group Health Centre (GHC).
“The criteria (for testing) from the Ministry of Health was narrow (at first),” Bouma said.
“That will change as the assessment centres grow in number and the swab availability grows...we hope we will see this change, more people swabbed, and already I’ve seen the assessment centre here in the Sault do more swabs in the last few days than they have been doing.”
Other assessment centres are located in Wawa, Blind River and Elliot Lake.
