Canada's failing test, trace system

It may not be readily apparent given all that's going on south of the border and the fact that we're no longer in a state of lockdown, but COVID-19 has been raging throughout the country. In many parts of Canada, the number of new cases reported on a daily basis is significantly higher than at any time during the spring, when much of the country was cooped up indoors, cowering in fear.

The implicit bargain of the first-wave lockdown was that Canadians would sacrifice their freedoms, friends and livelihoods for a period of time, while government and industry came up with ways to allow the rest of us to return to some degree of normalcy as safely as possible. Canadians held up their end; government did not.

We knew from the beginning that a robust contact-tracing apparatus was one of the keys to controlling the disease. Yet even now, eight months into this thing, our systems are either not in place, or are buckling under the weight of increased infections.

Take COVID Alert, the federal government's contact-tracing app that was released in July. The only two provinces that have not yet adopted the “national” app are Alberta and British Columbia, and neither of them seem to have particularly good reasons.

To be fair, Alberta was first out of the gate with a contact-tracing app, ABTraceTogether, which became available a full two months before the federal government got its act together. But it has a number of privacy and usability concerns, including the fact that iOS users have to keep it running in the foreground and keep their phones unlocked at all times in order for it to work. It also works only in Alberta, making it less effective given that Canadians are travelling between provinces.

Back in August, Alberta health officials said they would adopt the federal app. Last week, Health Minister Tyler Shandro said the reason the province is taking so long is because it is trying to figure out how users of ABTraceTogether can be “transitioned” to COVID Alert, as if it's not as easy as coming out with an update that tells users, “This app has been deprecated. Click here to install the new one.”

Then, Premier Jason Kenney said the province hasn't actually made a decision on switching to COVID Alert, arguing that it's less effective because it's not connected to Alberta's contact-tracing system. Which is true. But it could be integrated, as it has elsewhere, if there was a will to do it.

In B.C., the province's chief medical officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, encouraged British Columbians travelling to other provinces to download the app, saying it “would be an important thing to do.” But for those sticking closer to home, well, it just won't do.

Henry seemed to suggest that she would prefer a system that gave government officials details about where transmissions were taking place, but this would mean tracking users by GPS and sending information to a central database, which would cause a lot of Canadians to lose trust in a system that has been praised by privacy and security experts. She also complained that, “It goes back for 14 days, which to us doesn't make a lot of sense.”

So what? The whole point of the app is to alert Canadians if they have potentially been exposed so they can get tested and hopefully help cut down on the number of asymptomatic people who are spreading the virus in our communities. It was never going to be a panacea, but it is a useful tool to have in our pandemic toolbox. Failing to adopt it because it's not perfect doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And Lord know we could use all the help we can get.

Ontario has been falling way behind on testing, performing around 35,000 tests a day, which is well below the province's goal of 50,000, meaning there could be significant levels of community spread that no one knows about. Toronto announced this week that it plans to ramp-up its contract-tracing program in the coming weeks, after it almost completely shut down in October due to an overwhelming number of cases and not enough staff.

In Alberta, a whopping two-thirds of cases can no longer be traced back to a source — and that percentage has been steadily increasing. If we don't know how many people are infected with the virus, or the sources of infections, then it will not be possible to contain outbreaks or determine how safe various activities are to engage in. This will put provincial reopening plans on shaky ground.

As it stands, the virus is running rampant in many parts of the country. Quebec has been reporting around 1,000 new cases a day. So has Ontario, which recorded its highest single-day case count since the pandemic began on Tuesday. Alberta has been above 500 cases for days. And B.C., a province whose new cases never rose above double digits in the spring, has been consistently above 300 and recorded a record 425 on Thursday.

If current trends continue, this country could be on the path to another large-scale lockdown, as we have seen in the United Kingdom, Italy and elsewhere. This is something no one wants, and something we certainly can't afford. That's why it's incumbent on our governments to maintain robust testing and tracing systems, as well as other public health measures that have been proven to work elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, they've consistently let us down.

IF CURRENT

TRENDS CONTINUE, THIS COUNTRY

COULD BE ON THE PATH TO ANOTHER LARGE-SCALE LOCKDOWN.