Are we ready?

Testing, testing, testing. This has been the public health mantra since the pandemic began. Testing—and contact tracing—are how we get back to something approximating normal.

The public, largely, has listened. The logic isn’t hard to grasp. If daily cases are kept low, flare-ups can be identified and snuffed out rapidly through effective testing.

But for this whole strategy to work, Santé Publique has to hold up its end of the bargain. If we are to depend on testing as a viable tool to help us make safe decisions, then it has to be available, rapid, and responsive.

When testing is not any of those things—when people wait hours just to get a test, then wait at home for days afterwards to learn the results—even the most well-meaning people will begin to cheat a little.

The morning sore throat, the first rumblings of a cough, the onset of mild fever, all will be conveniently ignored. People will pop an Advil and rush off to work, school, or wherever else.

You would think—given our mostly COVID-FREE summer here in Quebec— that authorities would have used that crucial time to build an expansive and elastic testing infrastructure. You would think near-limitless funds would have been earmarked for testing, given how darned expensive shutting down the province is (remember March?).

You would think in each region spillover testing facilities would have been identified and adapted ahead of time, with staff on standby, in the event that existing facilities are overwhelmed.

None of these things appear to have happened. For some time, people in Granby have been begging for a COVID testing facility of their own, without any luck. Here in Sherbrooke, the Rue Murray facility has been slammed with crowds in recent weeks, with people waiting up to three hours to get tested.

Finally, on Wednesday, the CIUSSS announced new and larger testing sites on Rue J.-a.-bombardier, in the old Costco and BRP buildings. But no specific timeline has been given on when the facilities will be fully operational. Some testing, apparently, should be online by next week, and the site operating at full capacity within a few weeks (though these are only hazy estimates, and probably optimistic ones).

Why aren’t the sites ready now? According to news reports, work on converting them has only just begun. Yet haven’t experts been warning about a second wave for months?

Processing news like this, it is hard not to wonder whether the powersthat-be are actually in control, or simply lurching from crisis to crisis.

I have no inside knowledge on how Santé Publique operates. Like most people, I am merely standing on the outside looking in. But what I’ve witnessed personally—and heard anecdotally—is not all that encouraging.

In the middle of summer, I was tested at Rue Murray; it took 15 minutes, and I learned the results the very next morning. Then on a Wednesday in late August I was tested a second time. Already the crowds had begun at Rue Murray, and the test took two to three hours.

Far more worrying, however, was that I did not learn the results until the following Monday—a full five days later. If testing is that slow and irresponsive, how can the public possibly have confidence in it?

I have since discovered that the results were actually available the very day after the test was done. In other words, the delay was not in the testing itself, but in the communication of the information. And this is an administrative issue.

The announcement of a bigger testing site in Sherbrooke is certainly welcome news. But will other pressing problems be addressed? Will a less back-logged communication system be put in place? Will people still wait five days to get their results?

And why weren’t these bugs worked out in the summer, when we still enjoyed that most precious commodity—time?