Posted at 5:00 a.m.
At a time when the situation is still as chaotic at airports, more and more voices are being raised to demand an end to COVID-19 screening tests for travelers upon their arrival in Canada.
On Thursday, the International Air Transport Association publicly called for an end to screening tests “for all passengers arriving in Canada”. The organization has made public a letter sent the day before to the great patron of Public Health of Canada, in which it maintains that this measure cannot “be justified from a scientific point of view or from a political point of view public, knowing the current realities of the pandemic and the restrictions already put in place by the Canadian government.”
In recent weeks, many experts have questioned the usefulness and effectiveness of these tests for travelers arriving in Canada. “With one of the highest infection rates in the world, it doesn’t make sense, especially for vaccinated people who have to provide a negative test to fly,” said David Juncker, director of the biomedical engineering department. at McGill University. “Given the limited resources, these tests would be more useful to validate suspected cases. »
“I lost four days”
This is also the opinion of Joël Cyr, who returned from Portugal on January 12, where he had gone to visit his wife’s family. “My wife and I are double vaccinated, we each provided a negative PCR test before flying. At the Toronto airport, I was randomly selected, and given a test box and told that if the government called me, I should use it. »
After four days, Mr. Cyr ends up receiving several automatic calls from Health Canada in English, which he ignores, believing that he is the subject of fraudulent calls. He eventually joined the Ministry. He is then told that he will have to communicate with a nurse, who will show him during a videoconference how to use the test before sending it by Purolator to obtain the results.
“My result was negative, and I still lost four days during which I could not go and help my father in the hospital when the staff were exhausted. They even found an attendant who had passed out in my dad’s room. »
Back from France, where she had gone to find her family, whom she had not seen for two years, Emma Léorat and her spouse had to wait seven days before receiving the results of the PCR tests administered at the Montreal airport. . The young woman finds it ridiculous to have had to isolate herself for a week after taking a PCR test. “It’s also a huge waste. All of this must be very expensive. »
$1.15 billion
Like David Juncker, Marie-Pascale Pomey, professor and researcher at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal (UdeM), also believes that Canada could better use its resources in the current context.
It gives a sense of false security. It’s a bit of a political measure. Initially, I think it was a measure to curb foreign travel. But we ask a lot more in Canada than what is required in other countries. And that’s a lot of budget, a lot of resources.
Marie-Pascale Pomey, professor and researcher at the UdeM School of Public Health
According to the most recent data, 1.08% of the 1.2 million passengers who arrived by air in Canada between November 28 and December 25 tested positive for PCR. However, the whole operation is very expensive for taxpayers, or $1.15 billion, according to the contracts signed by Public Services and Procurement Canada, reports Radio-Canada.
Several companies share the kitty, including the firm Dynacare, notably chosen to administer tests at the Montreal airport.
There also seems to be some confusion at airports, where the instructions are not applied uniformly. “In terms of organization, it’s really catastrophic, notes Marie-Pascale Pomey. Communications are really not very clear. »
Upon his return from Portugal, at the Toronto airport, Joël Cyr was surprised that he was designated for a test and not his spouse. Emma Léorat, she reports that she was told that all people who arrived from a flight of more than four hours had to be tested. “I even wondered if I was being given a real PCR test. It didn’t look like the test I had before leaving France at all, I barely felt it [l’écouvillon] in my nose. »