Huge lineups have once again formed at COVID-19 testing sites around the province — putting capacity limits to the test.
It’s believed many are still wanting to test negative to see friends and family over the holidays, despite public health officials urging those who aren’t sick to step out of line.
“People are in line, I believe, to get tested just to make sure they don’t have it,” Global BC medical contributor Dr. Birinder Narang said Wednesday.
“We know that the test pickup yield is not great if you’re not symptomatic so all you’re really doing is giving yourself a false sense of reassurance. You could go get that test, 10 hours later you might start feeling symptoms and then what has that test really shown you? Not much.”
B.C. health officials said Tuesday that they will expand access to rapid COVID-19 tests, but take-home kits will not be available in the province until the new year.
The province is currently using around 35,000 tests per week, officials said. This is expected to climb as the program expands.B.C. is expecting an inventory of about 2,600,000 tests.
One of the priority areas will be to make at-home rapid tests available at sample collection sites for people who are showing symptoms. About 700,000 tests will be available at the collection sites and will help ease some of the pressure on the current testing system, officials said.
Another 100,000 tests will go to staff, residents and visitors in long-term care, while an additional 100,000 tests will be made available at acute care sites for symptomatic staff and/or close contacts.
Narang said that going forward, case counts will become “unreliable” due to the limited testing capacity and that’s why health officials are keeping a close eye on what is happening around the world and in hospitals in other countries.
“I think it is reasonable to expect that many of us will get exposed to and infected by Omicron and we have some data from the U.K. showing the reinfection rate is about five times higher than that of Delta,” he said.
When it comes to the long lineups at testing sites, Narang said to only go if you think you have COVID-19.
He said if someone is displaying symptoms, such as a sore throat or a runny nose or fever, even if it is mild, that person should go and get a COVID-19 test.
“When you go get tested, at this point, you should act like you’re positive,” he said. “Which means you go into isolation while you’re still waiting for your result.”
With so many people getting tested and long waits at the testing stations, Narang added that it may take longer to get results back so it’s very important to isolate.
“We know that in Vancouver, 50 to 70 per cent of the cases are Omicron and it’s doubling every two days from what we’re learning around the world. So if you’re positive, you need to stay at home, which means you need to isolate, you don’t go to work, you don’t go to school for seven days if you’re fully vaccinated and 10 days if you’re unvaccinated.”
Narang said these are new guidelines in place but it will still be very important to let your close contacts know if you do test positive as contact tracing will not be able to keep up with the demand and the increased cases.
At the end of that timeline, isolation can end if you are feeling well and have not had a fever for at least 24 hours, Narang added.
Cases of COVID-19 continue to soar in B.C., with cases driven by the Omicron variant.
In just 24 hours, B.C. recorded 1,308 cases of the virus Tuesday.
This breaks the single-day record in B.C. with the previous set on April 8, which was 1,293 cases.
The new cases bring the provincial total to 6,348 active infections. This number has doubled in just one week as it was 3,171 cases on Dec. 14.
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