As provinces limit PCR testing, should Canadians be able to report rapid test results?

As more provinces scale back PCR testing for COVID-19 and the Omicron variant continues to surge, many people in Canada are relying on results from take-home rapid antigen tests, if they can get their hands on them.

However, in much of the country, rapid tests are going uncounted and are not included in official provincial case counts. Some medical experts are warning it's important to document those results to keep tabs on the pandemic's progress.

"We need it for a number of things," said Sally Otto, a UBC evolutionary biologist and member of B.C.'s COVID-19 Modelling Team.

"In order to predict when we're going to be at the peak, when we're going to be at the downside of this Omicron wave, we need to know how many people are infected. If we don't have a good sense of that, it's really hard to know, are we still at the beginning of this wave or are we at the end of this wave?"

No province tracks positive results from rapid tests, and it's getting more difficult for people to access other forms of testing in several parts of Canada. 

On Thursday, for example,  Ontario changed its testing guidelines to say people who receive positive results on rapid antigen tests no longer need to get PCR tests for confirmation. And as of Friday, the province is also limiting PCR testing to high-risk people who are symptomatic, vulnerable populations and workers in high-risk settings.

A patchwork of approaches to documenting rapid test results are in place in jurisdictions throughout Canada to document rapid test results, such as:

"A piecemeal effort is not going to be as good in terms of the ability to have a good sense of actually how many people are infected right now, what's the predicted burden that's going to lead to with hospitalization and when will we be through this," Otto said.

The precedent for reporting of rapid tests already exists: the United Kingdom has been asking residents to report their results — positive, negative or void — for the last nine months.

"The best data we've had about the COVID pandemic has been from the United Kingdom and that's been because of their strong data analytic framework. They have data on cases linked to hospitalization and vaccination and that's world class," Otto said.

Jarvis Schmid of Calgary tested positive for COVID-19 on a rapid test on Boxing Day.

After he processed the news, Schmid next wondered what he needed to do with his result.

"I remember someone saying something about it's good to have these records on hand. What if you have long term symptoms or it helps with diagnoses?" said the 38-year-old, who has been isolating from his family.

There is no system to track rapid test results in Alberta so Schmid instead uploaded a photo of his rapid test along with the date he took the test into his electronic medical records.