Province’s testing numbers didn’t reach lofty goals
Test numbers are up but held back by shortages of equipment
Alberta is recalibrating its goals for COVID -19 testing due to global supply chain challenges, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, chief medical officer of health, said Friday.
Previously, the province had aspired to the lofty goal of completing 9,000 tests daily by the end of April. Though the province considerably upped its testing capacity over the month, Alberta’s labs maxed out on April 29, when just over 5,200 tests were processed. On average, 3,000 Albertans were tested for the novel coronavirus each day in April.
“There is a global, significant demand for testing supplies, so that includes both things like the swabs that are used to take the tests as well as the lab reagent or the chemicals that are used to process the tests,” Hinshaw said.
“That’s something that we continue to manage and seek alternate options for because we know that testing remains a cornerstone of our strategy.”
Alberta did expand its testing capacity to 7,000 tests per day by the end of April, but Hinshaw says current demand has not required the province to make full use of that capacity.
Currently, all Albertans with COVID-19 symptoms — fever, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat or a runny nose — are eligible for testing. Testing is also happening where outbreaks have occurred and for vulnerable populations, including long-term care residents.
Hinshaw says part of the reason demand is so low may be because measures meant to limit the spread of COVID-19 have restricted the spread of other common viruses as well.
“It looks like less people are actually getting sick, and that’s a good thing,” she said. “Part of the lower-than-anticipated numbers is actually a success story because we don’t actually have as many people who are feeling ill.”
Dr. Carolyn O’hara is the chief medical laboratory officer with Alberta Precision Laboratories, which runs publicly funded health testing in Alberta and is processing most of the province’s COVID-19 tests.
She says that as her labs have increased capacity, Alberta Health Services has expanded testing criteria to make better use of the province’s testing resources.
O’hara says the lab is looking to double its testing capacity by the end of May to about 14,000 tests per day. She says that expansion will take decentralizing of testing to many locations, including private labs. For a stretch, the limiting factor for expanding testing was the supply of machines and chemicals, including a shortage of reagent, that hampered Alberta’s testing numbers near the start of April.
The heightened volume of testing is far beyond what the province’s infrastructure was designed for, and O’hara says getting to this level was a tough task.
“When we first started doing testing way back in March, we were doing 300 tests a day, so it’s quite an accomplishment that we were able to ramp up testing so quickly,” O’hara said. “The more remarkable thing in my mind is in our public-health labs. The testing we’re doing is all lab-developed, tests that we’ve developed in-house.”
Hinshaw says AHS anticipates testing capacity to climb to more than 10,000 tests each day by mid-may, a number significantly below the previously stated goal of 20,000 daily tests by the end of that month.
More comprehensive testing is one thing Alberta outlined as a need before the province can begin to allow some businesses to reopen, which could happen as soon as May 14. Hinshaw said she thinks as the relaunch begins more Albertans may become concerned about their symptoms and encouraged everyone who feels sick to get tested to help identify potential outbreaks.
O’hara also said testing eligibility has shifted as the province nears its peak of COVID-19 hospitalizations, projected for mid to late May. “The more we learn, the more we continue to change our testing criteria, and I assume that will continue to evolve as we move through this pandemic,” she said.
Alberta’s COVID -19 testing rates still grade out as among the best in Canada on a per-capita basis.
As of April 28, the province has conducted 29.5 tests per 1,000 Albertans, a rate almost double that of Ontario and more than twice that of British Columbia. The only province or territory with a greater rate of testing is the Northwest Territories, which has 1/100th the population of Alberta.
In Alberta, 3.6 per cent of all tests have returned positive, compared to 6.6 per cent of cases in Canada.
In Quebec, which has more than half of the country’s total confirmed COVID-19 cases, 13.1 per cent of tests have returned positive.
Albertans can find out whether they are eligible for testing by using the province’s self-assessment tool, accessible online at ahs.ca/covid.