When Amanda developed a fever, sore throat, and dry cough at the end of March she immediately thought of one thing: the new coronavirus.
With Canada, and much of the world in lockdown amid the deadly pandemic, she went online to the Ontario Ministry of Health website to see if she needed to be tested — it told her she didn’t.
“The fear is that if I get a severe version of this illness I will need a lengthy hospitalization and I have two young children,” said Amanda, who agreed to speak with Global News on the condition of using a pseudonym.
“But I hadn’t technically been in direct contact with someone who had travelled, or who had been diagnosed as being positive.
“I didn’t really meet any of the criteria for testing.”
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1:19 Coronavirus outbreak: Trudeau says releasing range of scenarios ‘not as useful’ as clear COVID-19 data
Amanda, an attorney in Toronto, self-isolated for 14 days and, along with millions of other Canadians, is working from home. But she is left wondering if she did in fact, have COVID-19.
“When I looked into it a little bit further, I discovered that the reason [that she was not advised to be tested] is that in Ontario there is a lack of testing,” she said.
Provinces like Ontario, Alberta and B.C., have limited who is being tested for COVID-19 amid a shortage of testing swabs, reduced lab capacity and a lack of reagents — the specific chemicals needed by labs to complete the tests. The priority, for now, is front-line health care workers showing symptoms, hospitalized patients or recent travellers.
But experts worry that narrow focus will cause health officials to miss hundreds or even thousands of cases and Canada may not know whether it is truly “flattening the curve.”
“We would like to see greater access to testing so that we aren’t left in a situation where there’s uncertainty around whether a particular person may or may not have the disease,” said Peter Phillips, a clinical professor specializing in infectious diseases at the University of British Columbia. “And that applies to even people with mild disease in the community.”
Philips said that while a positive test may not necessarily change treatment, it’s important in terms of managing community spread as people generally become more compliant with self-isolation.
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5:49 Coronavirus outbreak: B.C. health officer says rate of testing ‘up there’ with South Korea
Sean Wormsbecke, an emergency doctor at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C, said he sends several COVID-19 cases home without testing — given current guidelines.
“There isn’t currently a tracking system for those cases that don’t warrant admission to hospital,” he said, noting that he can’t be certain they are COVID-19. “But I’m seeing patients who have the exact same symptom profile, in terms of how they describe their cough, how they describe shortness of breath.”
He urged people to take social distance seriously and to follow all self-isolation protocols.
“I see those almost every shift and they don’t count towards the official tally,” he said. “There is a significant portion of these patients.”
2:41 Coronavirus outbreak: WHO says key to stopping COVID-19 spread is ‘test and isolate’
Coronavirus outbreak: WHO says key to stopping COVID-19 spread is ‘test and isolate’
Nearly two-thirds of reported COVID-19 cases in Canada as of March 28 are related to community spread, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada, meaning a case that results from the virus being passed within a community, rather than being contracted through someone who has recently travelled.
“It’s more likely that if their friends and family know [a person] is positive they’re going to stay away,” he said. “And if you don’t have that information, then it’s likely there are going be breaches of the self-isolation protocol.”
How does Canada’s testing compare to the world?
The World Health Organization and other health agencies have continued to beat the drum over the importance to “test, test, test” to fight the spread of the virus.
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Global health experts have pointed to South Korea as one of the few countries to contain the oubreak, reporting just 89 new cases of the novel coronavirus Thursday, down from 101 new cases a day earlier, and seemingly flattening the curve of new infections.
“They had very aggressive testing and they went after these cases and did very detailed contact tracing, including the use of cell phone and credit card data,” Philips said.
Canada has tested more than 255,000 people for a per capita rate of 650 tests per 100,000, well ahead of Italy and the U.S. the hardest hit by COVID-19, but well back of South Korea who has done roughly 800 per capita.
Since its first case in February, Iceland has launched ambitious testing for the virus. Anyone on the island – home to about 364,000 people – can get tested. They do not need to have recently travelled abroad or even have to be showing any symptoms.
As a result, about five per cent of the population has been tested.
Dawn Bowdish, Canada Research Chair in aging and immunity at McMaster University, said Canada tested “aggressively” in the early months of January to February, but ran into trouble as global supply chains became squeezed.
“In the very, very early days, we were on the higher end of average for testing,” she said. “At the time, most of our cases were travel-related or they were with contacts of people who had travelled. “
As countries began to fight for limited supplies of nasal swabs and chemicals needed to do the tests, provinces, especially Ontario which had high case numbers in Toronto, started to limit testing.
2:05 Premier warns of ‘dark days’ ahead, announces funding to fight coronavirus pandemic
Premier warns of ‘dark days’ ahead, announces funding to fight coronavirus pandemic
“At that point, compromises had to be made and I believe that our public health agencies are doing the best they can with what they have,” Bowdish said.
And now with more cases appearing to be asymptomatic, meaning people are displaying little or no symptoms, there are calls for testing to be widened.
“We are absolutely missing cases”
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“One of the compromises is that we are not testing as widely as I’m sure everyone in public health would like,” Bowdish said.
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Both Bowdish and Philips say more money should be going towards testing and contact tracing, which involves retracing the steps of a COVID-19 patient and tracking down anyone who may have had contact with them.
How have governments responded?
2:29 New facilities being built to prepare for spike in Canada’s COVID-19 cases
New facilities being built to prepare for spike in Canada’s COVID-19 cases
Tina Namiesniowski, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, told a House of Commons committee this week that the federal government is working to ramp up testing.
“We are working hard, collectively across the country, with all jurisdictions, to advance testing,” she said. “The National Microbiology Lab continues to support provinces and territories needing assistance with testing and other reference services.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced a $74-million investment in a new made-in-Canada testing technology to help provinces increase testing capacity.
However, it remains unclear when provinces can start using the technology as it has not yet been approved by Health Canada. The company said in a statement it expects to begin shipping thousands of test kits to provinces “soon.”
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Ontario has faced criticism for its slow testing rate, with the lowest per-capita testing rate in the country at about 350 per 100,000 people, despite having nearly 40 per cent of Canada’s population.
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Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott’s’ office said this week it’s working to increase testing capacity, currently at approximately 9,000 tests per day, and has reduced the backlog of outstanding tests from 11,391 on March 25 to 3,135 as of March 31.
“We are surging the system and testing as many people as possible,” Premier Doug Ford told reporters Monday during a press conference. “We need more kits to get out there, but it’s not as quick as we would like.”
Infectious disease experts worry that with infection rates of anywhere from 30 to 60 per cent of the population, increased testing could help prevent Canada’s medical system from being overwhelmed.
“We need to be testing aggressively and not just restricting it to those patients who are sick,” Philips said. “The overload of the medical system, intensive care units and the death toll associated with those sort of percentages are absolutely daunting.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
