UPDATE: Less than 24 hours after this story was published, Thames Valley Family Health Team and London Health Sciences Centre announced that the assessment centre located at Carling Heights would begin taking appointments starting Nov. 8, phasing out its time-card system.
Local health officials are urging symptomatic residents in London and Middlesex County to get tested for the coronavirus following a notable slump in visits recently to the city’s assessment centres.
According to the health unit, the assessment centres at Carling Heights Optimist Centre and Oakridge Arena have together recorded a total of 2,887 client visits over the last seven days, compared to 3,017 the seven days prior, and 3,241 seven days prior to that.
“Both centres are well below the capacity… and we have lots of room daily at both centres for folks to to get tested,” said Mike McMahon, executive director of the Thames Valley Family Health Team (TVFHT), which operates the centres alongside London Health Sciences Centre and in partnership with Middlesex-London Paramedic Service.
McMahon says Carling Heights in particular, which has been doing walk-in tests using a time-card system, has been conducting about 250 tests per day, well below capacity, and on par with testing rates seen there in late May and early June.
As of Wednesday, the seven-day average for new cases in London and Middlesex stood at 8.0, compared to the 14-day average of 7.64.
With new case levels remaining fairly flat, and with assessment centre visits dipping, the region’s medical officer of health, Dr. Chris Mackie, pleaded Monday for those with symptoms to get tested early, ideally within 24 to 48 hours of becoming symptomatic.
“They’ve done a tremendous job to address the wait time issues, there’s much less challenge around getting tested or waiting in line. So if you have symptoms, please go as soon as possible to Carling Heights,” he said.
Both Carling Heights and Oakridge Arena saw a major surge in visitations through the month of September in response to a spike in cases among Western University students and concerns over the start of a new school year.
Health unit figures show that between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20, Carling Heights and Oakridge Arena, which at the time were both treating walk-ins on a first-come, first-serve basis, collectively recorded 4,635 visits, resulting in hours-long line ups and capacity issues that forced officials to close the centres early.
Similar issues were seen elsewhere in the province, prompting the Ford government in late September to shift assessment centres to appointment-only testing and introduce changes to testing guidelines that prioritized certain people, such as those with symptoms.
The province also announced it would phase in appointment-only asymptomatic testing at select Ontario pharmacies. (Eight pharmacies currently offer such testing in London.)
The changes, which came into effect in London on Oct. 5, made an impact, health unit data shows. From Oct. 5 to Oct. 9, Oakridge Arena, which isn’t open on weekends, recorded a total of 803 visits compared to 1,642 from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2.
At the same time, however, Carling Heights — which continued with walk-in testing but added a new time-card system — saw a significant, albeit temporary, demand increase, recording 2,469 visits from Oct. 5 to Oct. 9 as Londoners came looking for non-appointment swabs.
Those numbers would level off by the week of Oct. 19 and have dipped slightly since.
McMahon says that decline may be due to the public being unsure whether they can even get screened at the assessment centres in the wake of the guideline changes and pharmacy testing rollout.
“I think that the addition of that pharmacy volume to the testing, as well as the changing guidelines, made it so that people are also making some assumptions about the Oakridge and Carling assessment centres that we should (probably) do some hard work to to unwind,” he said.
“All the pharmacies and all the assessment centres are testing on all the same guidelines… So there’s some misunderstanding that if you are asymptomatic, the assessment centres are no longer able to serve you, but that’s just a product of those long lines and the relief of four weeks ago.”
While both Carling Heights and Oakridge Arena are indeed prioritizing people who are symptomatic, people who have been exposed to a confirmed case, are part of an outbreak investigation, or are eligible for testing as part of a targeted testing initiative directed by the province can also be screened.
McMahon says, ideally, assessment centres and pharmacy providers would be able to test everyone who needs to be tested.
“What I’m hearing is that, despite our capacity, we are not testing the folks because they’re not coming that need to be tested,” he said.