(Toronto) Canada’s largest airlines and the country’s busiest airport are calling on the federal government to drop its rule requiring COVID-19 testing upon arrival.
Posted at 12:25 p.m.
In a letter to the federal and Ontario governments, Air Canada, WestJet and Toronto Pearson Airport are calling for a transfer of testing capacity from airports to the community.
As COVID-19 cases have increased in recent weeks, many provinces have decided to restrict access to PCR testing to people at higher risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19, or who are in environments where the virus could spread faster.
Travelers arriving in Canada must have a negative pre-arrival molecular test result for COVID-19. Once they arrive, those coming from any country other than the United States are retested and must self-isolate until they get their result. Those who come from the United States are randomly selected to undergo such a test.
Airlines and the airport say testing arriving travelers is not the best use of Canada’s limited testing resources. They estimate that the percentage of positive test results for people screened at airports across Canada in the past week is much lower than that of tests carried out in the community.
Air Canada, WestJet and Pearson want the government to return to random arrival testing of international travelers and require isolation, for international travelers, only for those who show symptoms or who receive a positive result after a random test . They argue that those who show no symptoms after testing negative before departing a flight to Canada should not be required to self-isolate.