A month after the major pre-Christmas stockouts, the shortage of rapid tests in Quebec could soon be a thing of the past with the delivery of 600,000 boxes of rapid tests Tuesday in most pharmacies and a distribution already started in primary schools.
The list of customers waiting for a box of rapid tests from pharmacist Benoit Morin shrunk over the deliveries in January, going from 400 names “to around 50” currently.
“Things are calming down in the pharmacy. I think the supply problem, [cette] week, it will be behind us,” enthuses the man who is also president of the Quebec Association of Pharmacist Owners.
Slight delays in truck delivery mean that some pharmacies will not receive their share of the last shipment of three million rapid tests delivered to Quebec by the federal government until Wednesday. This is the third delivery to pharmacies since the beginning of the year, each time of the same quantity.
Arrived for primary, soon to secondary
The count of rapid tests that arrived in Quebec in January now stands at more than 12 million tests, out of the 31.5 million promised by Ottawa at the height of the nationwide shortage of COVID-19 self-tests.
Three-quarters of these tests (9 million units, or 1.8 million boxes) went to pharmacies. The balance of (3.6 million tests) was sent to the school network for distribution to primary schools. Students in Montreal have already started bringing them home since last week.
The small screening tool must also enter high school, confirms the Federation of School Service Centers of Quebec. Their tests are “expected soon”. Unlike the self-tests distributed in packs of five in elementary schools, secondary tests will be made available to Montreal students for screening on school grounds.
“A pupil who develops symptoms during the day will be able to take a rapid test at school, as will the staff of these schools. In light of the result, he will have to respect the isolation instructions that apply to his situation, ”explains Alain Perron, spokesperson for the Center de services scolaire du Montréal.
Not yet in sufficient quantity
The frequency of arrivals of rapid tests in Quebec does not make it possible to decree the shortage over, nuance however Hugues Mousseau, the director general of the Quebec Association of distributors in pharmacies.
“As we speak, I’m not ready to say we’re meeting demand,” he said.
The 1.8 million kits of five BTNX Rapid Response tests distributed in pharmacies since the beginning of January, or in the process of being distributed, are very far from being sufficient to provide a box each to the seven million Quebecers of more than fourteen years, calculates Mr. Mousseau.
According to him, the shortage of rapid tests will not be over until Quebec has enough of them in stock to meet the demands of pharmacies, as is the case for other products.
“In the case of rapid tests, as soon as we receive them in the distribution centers, they are left on the loading dock and within a few hours we have split the pallets to send them to the more than 1,900 pharmacies of Quebec. We don’t have time to put the rapid tests in our inventories as they have already left. »
In addition, Quebecers lucky enough to have got their hands on one of the 900,000 boxes of rapid tests sold before Christmas now have the right to pick up a second box at the pharmacy. Pharmacist Benoit Morin, however, invites the population to be parsimony. “If you haven’t used your first box, there’s no need to renew it. »
The Quebec government expects to receive by the end of January only another order of three million tests in the form of a kit of five, convenient for distribution in pharmacies. The head of distribution, Daniel Paré, also complained of not knowing what to expect for the following months.
With Marco Fortier