Premier Doug Ford says about half of Ontario’s public health units are not doing enough testing for COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Ford blasted — but would not identify — several regions for falling short.
“They know who they are,” said Ford. “Start picking up your socks and start doing testing.”
Ford scolding some of the province’s 34-regional medical officers of health, after a dip in the number of COVID-19 tests completed on a daily basis.
“Well, I think we all working hard,” says Dr. Kieran Moore.
Moore is the medical officer of health for Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health (KFL&A), and he defends the testing carried out in the Kingston region.
“I don’t think they were pointing fingers at us,” says Moore, “because we just haven’t seen any activity in our region for weeks now.
“And we are maintaining and following the directions of the premier on testing long-term care facilities and staff.”
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Premier Ford did clarify later on Tuesday that he was referring to low long-term care testing numbers.
To date, KFL&A public health have completed 4,923 tests, which is equivalent to 2,357 per 100,000 in the population.
In neighbouring Hastings and Prince Edward counties, 3,666 tests have been delivered — the equivalent to 2,040 tests per 100,000 people.
Leeds, Grenville and Lanark Public Health reported 3,341 tests completed to date. That health unit was unable to provide Global News with the results done per 100,000 in the population.
With a larger population, KFL&A is leading the pack.
“I’m very happy with our testing rates of our assessment centers,” says Moore, “I’m happy with the progress we’ve made with our long-term care facilities.
“And we will now, once we finish them, be moving into finishing the testing of daycare workers and our homeless shelters.”
“I’m calling them out right now,” said Ford on Tuesday. “You’ve got to pick up the pace.
“When you have a bunch of them, half of them really exceeding expectations, and then you have some others that aren’t even putting the work in as far as I can see.”
The Ontario government has set a goal of processing 14,000 tests per day and on Monday that number dipped to under 11,000.
The capacity to process tests for the entire province, according to Ontario’s chief medical officer Dr. David Williams, is over 19,000 per day.
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