Ottawa doesn’t seem inclined to suspend random COVID-19 testing for returning travelers, preferring to keep that measure in place of logistical hiccups in delivering results and questioning experts.
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Travelers have testified to having received their test results two weeks after their arrival, a period longer than the 10-day isolation period provided for people who test positive.
“The objective of this program is not to provide test results at an individual level, it is to understand at an aggregate level the type of importation of the virus that we can see in the country,” said Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos during a press briefing on Thursday.
Even if there are other techniques to have a portrait of the variants in circulation, such as the analysis of wastewater, for example, they are not sufficient to understand the origin of these variants.
Dr Theresa Tam, head of PHAC, explained that sewage analysis is a promising long-term technology but remains limited in its ability to detect where variants are coming from.
In short, the Public Health Agency (PHAC) wants to make sure it knows “the amount of positivity that comes into the country, where it comes from, with what type of variant or sub-variant and how it varies. according […] the origin of people returning to the country,” said Minister Duclos.
“There aren’t many other ways to go about getting very accurate results depending on where people are coming from.”
PHAC aims to screen nearly 5,000 travelers per day. The majority of these are selected at the air border, and 800 at the land border with the United States.
Health Canada could not estimate the cost of this measure, which was reimposed on July 19 after being suspended more than a month earlier. The ministry has moved testing away from airports to avoid adding to the chaos that marked last summer.
The measure had been criticized by two experts consulted by the QMI Agency.
Microbiologist Jean Barbeau stated in particular that the spread of the virus no longer had much to do with the entry of variants at this stage of the pandemic in Canada, given that transmission is already taking place on a large scale at the domestic level. .
The announcement of the return of random tests in July was also badly received by the airline industry and the tourist industry.