Ontario to change COVID-19 testing, tracing guidance in face of Omicron spike
CTV
Ontario will announce changes to its official COVID-19 testing guidance badly needed as the surge in cases driven by the Omicron variant has made getting a test next to impossible in the past week.
People with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 faced long lineups and in some places a complete lack of available appointments for PCR testing over the last several days, as Ontario is now routinely reporting 9,000 to 10,000 cases per day.
Prior to the holidays, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kieran Moore said that public health units would no longer be contact tracing cases outside of high-risk settings such as congregate care or hospitals.
Labs were able to process between 60,000 to 70,000 samples per day prior to the holidays, with up to 19 per cent of them coming back positive, a clear sign that infections are going undetected.
Public Health Ontario says that infection data should now be interpreted with caution as it is a significant undercount of the actual amount of infection occurring in the province.
