Provinces urged to seek testing help

OTTAWA — Canada must ramp up its efforts to test residents for COVID-19 and trace anyone who may have come into contact with the virus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday as he urged provinces to seek federal help with the process if needed.

The call for action came as the number of new cases continued to increase in Ontario — one of the provinces hardest-hit by the virus. Economic recovery efforts, meanwhile, forged ahead in New Brunswick while Alberta announced regional public health restrictions would be easing imminently.

Trudeau offered few specifics when announcing measures to support national testing and contact tracing efforts, but said such measures would be essential to control the pandemic now and in the future.

“Taking strong, collaborative action to expand testing and contact tracing is important for both Canadians and businesses to have confidence that we’re on the right foot,” Trudeau said. “They need to know that we have a co-ordinated approach to gradually reopen that is rooted in evidence, science and the ability to rapidly detect and control any future outbreaks.”

Trudeau said the government hopes to recommend a smartphone app next month that could play a part in the contact tracing effort, noting similar efforts in countries such as Singapore and South Korea have been successful to date.

Ottawa is helping procure swabs and other key testing materials, he said, and is also able to provide thousands of staff to help make contact tracing calls.

Trudeau noted some of those resources are already being deployed in Ontario, where testing has re-emerged as an issue amid stubbornly static COVID-19 case data.

Ministry of Health data shows the province currently has capacity to conduct 21,000 tests a day — about twice the number of tests conducted in recent days. Ontario’s growth rate of new cases, meanwhile, has hovered between 1.5 and 1.9 per cent for 12 of the last 13 days, including Friday when the number of new diagnoses climbed 1.8 per cent.

The national picture is similar, with provinces and territories collectively testing less than half of the roughly 60,000 people the country’s chief public health officer said should be the daily target.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the province will concentrate on testing frontline workers over the weekend.

The Canadian Press