Here’s why COVID-19 testing matters
Why? If I had to characterize the common thematic thread of the messages and emails I’ve been receiving in response to my recent columns arguing Ontario must do more testing for coronavirus, that question would be it. Why?
Sometimes people ask the question in a way that makes it clear they don’t want an answer (“Why do more testing when there’s no point?”). Occasionally people ask the question in a way that causes me to mistake it for a genuine query (“Why is testing helpful?”). And then it’s only after I’ve sent 10 tweets in earnest answer that the person responds in a way that makes me realize I needn’t have bothered (“This is flu season. Symptoms are similar. Look up numbers.”).
Debating whether the current COVID-19 outbreak is not so much a pandemic as a bunch of hypochondriacs overreacting to influenza — well, that doesn’t feel like a good use of my time. However, it seems as though a lot of those who have contacted me asking why I’m so adamant that we need more testing are people who truly want to know.
And I understand why they’re skeptical: there’s no cure or early treatment for COVID-19, we’re socially distancing already, people who are symptomatic or returning from abroad are being told to self isolate as though they were infected, people in true medical distress will still go to the hospital. Given all that, why is ramping up testing helpful, let alone crucial? Here are some of the reasons.
Test results allow a person to find out whether they can hug and sleep in the same room as their spouse, or whether they can cuddle with their young child. It’s the difference between sharing meals with immediate family or staying holed up in the basement doing separate loads of laundry.
That’s a minor advantage but not a trivial one.
And as the government gets more serious about what self- isolating means, steps that make isolation less disruptive and painful are especially helpful. For example, the federal government is now imposing mandatory quarantines on returning international travellers that forbid them from returning to their homes for 14 days if they live with a vulnerable person. The government will be paying to house these travellers in a hotel for two weeks in case they might be infected. If the government tested them instead, many of them could just go home and at least be isolated with loved ones.
It is true that testing does not in itself stop the spread of the virus. But we’re confident that quarantine and self-isolation do, and people are more likely to take these measures seriously — complying with them strictly rather than holding impromptu chat circles with neighbours while walking the dog — if they know they are infected.
Granted we don’t know for sure at this point; early indications are that most people infected with the coronavirus have either no symptoms at all or very mild symptoms. They won’t realize they have COVID-19 and will be less careful as a result.
Speaking of knowing things about the coronavirus, we don’t know very much, but almost everything we do know is a result of testing for it, and almost everything we can hope to learn about it in the future will be the result of testing for it.
How long do people infected with coronavirus shed the virus, potentially passing it on to other people? We need more testing to find out. If it turns out to be more than 14 days, our current isolation and quarantine strategies will have to be adjusted for better results. ( And boy, would it have been nice to know that a couple weeks ago.)
Has closing schools and businesses even worked at all? Probably. But we won’t know — and we certainly won’t know to what degree — until we ramp up testing.
So far, countries that have embarked on aggressive testing have also been the most successful at flattening their curves ( an important step to try to minimize the overwhelming of hospitals, as you may have heard once or twice by now).
Correlation doesn’t equal causation. But it would make sense that this isn’t a coincidence because countries such as South Korea have used their testing results to pinpoint infection hot spots and nip the spread of the virus in the bud there.
As I’m writing this on the evening of March 25, Ontario has a backlog of over 10,000 tests, and has completed just over 25,000 tests. As a comparison, the state of Washington, which has roughly half Ontario’s population, has completed about 34,000 tests.
It matters.
AS I AM WRITING THIS... ONTARIO HAS A BACKLOG OF OVER 10,000 TESTS — SOUPCOFF