Ontario’s COVID-19 testing strategy panned

Experts say asymptomatic carriers must be factored in as economy reopens

The new testing strategy for COVID-19 in Ontario falls short by not proactively checking workers like grocery store clerks, airport limo drivers and house cleaners with “occupational risks,” experts caution.

While Health Minister Christine Elliott said testing is being expanded to people with mild symptoms who were previously turned away, the effort turns a blind eye to others who could be unknowingly catching and spreading the virus, scientists told the Star Thursday.

“We play whack-a-mole if all we’re doing is waiting to see where infections pop up and then worrying about it,” said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.

“It’s way off what we need to be doing. We’ve known for two months this is an asymptomatic pandemic.”

The number of confirmed and probable cases in Ontario since the virus arrived in late January topped 23,000 Thursday with more than 1,900 deaths, many of them in long-term care.

Now that testing in the hardhit nursing home sector will be completed within days, the focus is moving to retirement homes, group homes, shelters and other congregate living situations along with those who have minor symptoms, Elliott said Thursday.

“Now we’re opening up more parts of the economy, we need to do more public surveillance testing to understand what effect are these openings having on the public,” she told a news conference with Premier Doug Ford.

Wilfrid Laurier University epidemiologist Todd Coleman, a former public health official in London, Ont., said the strategy should go further by systematically targeting high-risk workers.

“If you’re going to start implementing a plan of reopening and having people increase their chances of coming into contact with COVID-19, realistically you should be offering them a chance to know if they’ve become infected with the disease,” he told the Star.

“We cannot send people back to stores and workplaces without guaranteeing that everyone who needs a test will get a test,” added Green Leader Mike Schreiner.

Dr. David Williams, the province’s chief medical officer and a key adviser to Ford, has repeatedly rejected occasional testing of people without symptoms because someone could test negative one day and positive the next.

“The bottom line is we don’t want to test people who don’t have symptoms,” associate medical officer Dr. Barbara Yaffe said Thursday.

“If they are symptomatic they shouldn’t be going to work and they should be trying to get a test. But if they’re feeling fine and they’re using social distancing and hand washing and environmental cleaning then it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Furness argued that a regime of rigorous surveillance testing could have mitigated devastating outbreaks in nursing homes, food processing plants and the deaths of 10 Toronto airport limo drivers.

“We’re discovering in our rear-view mirror, ‘Oh wow, it looks like there’s hot spots everywhere.’ If we went about this properly we would do sentinel testing.”

With a slew of retail businesses cleared to open next Tuesday, the epidemiologists said it will take at least four weeks to gauge the impact on COVID-19 case numbers — particularly as the testing strategy pivots to new targets, further clouding a situation where it already takes days to accurately differentiate community spread from new cases in nursing homes.