More people qualify for priority testing as criteria expanded

Essential workers, residents and staff of homeless shelters and group homes and people living with health-care workers have been added to Ontario’s list of priority candidates for COVID -19 testing.

The province has also added several less-common COVID-19 symptoms to its testing criteria, including diarrhea and nausea, said Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, who urged people covered by the new criteria to be tested.

“The expanded criteria will allow us to test more people and get a better sense of the potential scope of infection in our community, and this is important into the future as we continue to look for more targeted strategies and the eventual relaxation of restrictions,” she said during Thursday’s media briefing.

Champlain Health Region incident commander Dr. Andrew Willmore called the expanded measures “important steps to protect some of the most vulnerable … the elderly and those with medical needs in long-term care facilities.”

Labs are now turning test results around within 24 hours, local officials said Thursday.

Under pressure to boost testing capacity, the Ontario government last weekend projected it would process 8,000 daily tests by Wednesday and 14,000 by April 29. Data released Thursday showed 9,001 tests completed in the previous day.

“We’ve hit our first target, and we’re going to keep ramping up our efforts,” Premier Doug Ford said.

Meanwhile, OC Transpo reported Thursday its third positive COVID -19 test for a driver and the fifth such result overall for an employee.

The driver last worked Saturday and “may have been experiencing symptoms as early as April 10,” John Manconi, the city’s general manager of transit operations, said in a release, adding the individual was self-isolating at home.

Ottawa Public Health reported another Ottawa death from COVID-19, bringing the local toll to 14. It also reported 35 new confirmed cases for a total of 678. More than 40 per cent of these cases have been resolved, though, meaning symptoms have cleared and isolation is no longer necessary.

Updated Ontario figures included 423 deaths and 8,961 laboratory-confirmed cases.

Quebec has had 15,857 confirmed cases, with 630 deaths.

Across Canada, 28,364 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,010 deaths have been reported.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said updated models predicted between 1,200 and 1,620 deaths from COVID-19 by April 21. Tam said the overall curve of new infections in Canada was “bending,” but the death rate was higher than expected because a high proportion of outbreaks were in long-term care facilities.

The Ontario government also announced a regulatory change that would more easily allow auto insurers to offer premium rebates for up to 12 months after the COVID-19 emergency.

The prohibition on such rebates had been in place so drivers weren’t misled in purchasing insurance based on them, the government said. Finance Minister Rod Phillips said the province wouldn’t require a specific percentage of rebates, but wanted them to be “commensurate with the scale of duress” facing families during the pandemic.