Province expanding rapid COVID-19 testing program

As variants of COVID-19 are found more and more in Saskatchewan, the provincial government is rolling out more of its stockpile of rapid tests.

The rapid tests can give a result within a half-hour, as opposed to the Saskatchewan Health Authority-administered test that can take days to come back with results.

Two weeks ago, the health authority admitted it had received more than 370,000 rapid tests from the federal government but had only distributed about 7,000 of them. Premier Scott Moe said they should have been dispensed sooner.

Now, the health authority and the Ministry of Health have a plan to disperse 700,000 rapid tests across the province to emergency shelters, detox facilities, group homes and schools, as well as emergency services like police, fire, ambulance, dental offices and participating pharmacies.

Long-term care homes will also get some, but they already had access to the tests.

“This extra testing is going to go a long way to put a bigger safety blanket across many areas,” Scott Livingstone, CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Authority, said during a media conference Thursday.

Dr. Saqib Shahab, the province’s chief medical health officer, said the rapid tests will give people in high-risk workplaces additional assurance and will decrease exposures in the workplace and decrease workers having to go into quarantine.

Livingstone said the rapid tests will be deployed within the next week or two, but some will take longer than others.

Places like schools often have nurses who could be trained to give tests, but the province has put out a Request for Pre-Qualifications (RFPQ) to find a group with workers to go out and administer the tests for places like fire and police services.

Livingstone said when the tests are rolled out to the those areas will depend on how long the RFPQ takes.

Any positive results from a rapid test will have to be confirmed with a PCR test. Negative results won’t have to be confirmed, which could reduce the backlog at the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s labs.

The ministry is also looking at pop-up point-of-care testing sites so health-care workers can carry out weekly surveillance testing on themselves.

The province had to make some changes to The Medical Laboratory Licensing Regulations for this plan to work, amending it so COVID-19 point-of-care specimen collection and testing sites don’t need a laboratory licence when they’ve entered into an agreement with the SHA.

“The Ministry of Health and Saskatchewan Health Authority will work with various sectors and provider groups to ensure training and support is in place to use these testing resources to their full potential,” the government added in a media release.

In the release, Health Minister Paul Merriman said the goal of the campaign is to increase testing options for people in the province.

“We know that testing plays a crucial role in helping to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus and now with variants of concern surfacing in our province it is more important than ever that testing is expanded to make it easier, quicker and more convenient to access,” he said.