Calls grow for more COVID-19 rapid antigen tests to be made available in northern Ontario

With Christmas fast approaching, Lisa Letkemann is still trying to decide whether it would be safe to have a small dinner with immediate family members from different households over the holidays.

Letkemann said the only way she would feel safe at indoor social gatherings of 10 people or less, as per current Ontario government guidelines, is if everyone gets a COVID-19 test beforehand.

It's especially concerning for the physician based in Sioux Lookout because of how transmissible the new Omicron variant is, and the particular vulnerability of health-care systems in small communities and First Nations across northern Ontario.

"That's why the rapid testing immediately before gathering is so important — wanting to protect my family, but also to make sure that I am not a doctor passing it on to anyone else," said Letkemann.

But to get access to a free rapid antigen test before Christmas, Letkemann would have to make the nearly 400-kilometre drive along mostly two-lane highways from Sioux Lookout to Thunder Bay, the only city in northwestern Ontario that was selected by the province to distribute free tests to the public.

Letkemann and others are raising questions about how the government decided on the locations for test distribution, and there are growing calls for the province to provide more rapid tests in the north.

Ontario announced last Thursday it would be provide free rapid tests at 150 locations provincewide as part of a "holiday pop-up testing blitz."

There were 200,000 rapid tests distributed at select LCBO stores, beginning Dec. 17, according to an emailed statement from the LCBO's media team. Only four LCBOs were selected across all of northern Ontario — in Sudbury, North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.

All of those test kits have been distributed. Reports across the province suggest several locations ran out of the kits within hours.

A number of pop-up locations will also provide an undisclosed number of rapid tests in Ontario, but only one site in northern Ontario is currently designated to distribute tests: the Intercity Shopping Centre in Thunder Bay, beginning at 9:30 a.m. ET on Friday.

"That's just not realistic to drive 10 hours round trip to pick up some test kits," Letkemann said, adding that driving conditions on northern highways are variable and can be dangerous in the winter.

The majority of sites to get free rapid tests during this "blitz" were in the Greater Toronto Area or near Ottawa, although rapid tests have also been made available across the province to schools, health-care organizations and select workplaces.

Dr. Sarah Newbery, a rural physician working in Marathon, about 300 kilometres east of Thunder Bay, says the fact the test kits were not more widely available to rural communities across northern Ontario is problematic.

"We need to be thinking first about how we ensure that we're getting resources to communities and to populations that are most vulnerable to illness and poor health outcomes," she said. "We need to have a way of ensuring that we're thinking about access for those populations so that they might have some equitable opportunity at health."