Ontario mulls regional reopening
New provincial strategy expands list of those who can get tested
TORONTO—Ontario is implementing an expanded COVID-19 testing strategy, including targeting specific sectors and using mobile teams, and the increased data that’s expected to follow is prompting the premier to consider a regional approach to reopening.
Premier Doug Ford had been asked on multiple occasions about the idea of a regional model and said it wasn’t on the table, but now he is asking health officials to show him what it would look like.
“The reality on the ground is different in every part of the province,” Ford said Friday. “With more testing, that testing becomes more and more clear, and knowing that information will help us be more precise. It will help us be more targeted.”
Two-thirds of the province’s cases are in the Greater Toronto Area, while some public health units are reporting few, if any, active COVID-19 cases. Sudbury, for example, currently has none.
Ontario has at times struggled to meet its daily testing goals, and is now expanding the list of those who can get tested. The new strategy released Friday includes targeting specific workers and sometimes bringing mobile testing units to them.
The strategy shows the province is now testing staff and inmates in some correctional facilities, staff in hospitals that have experienced outbreaks, first responders in Toronto and their families, LCBO workers, all residents and staff in retirement homes and people in long-term-care homes for a second time.
Next week, community testing will also start in places with a high number of COVID-19 cases, with a van or bus going to affected workplaces, or simply directing employees to go to assessment centres.
Ford said mobile teams will be deployed to “hot spots” across Ontario to help deal with any outbreaks.
“Ramping up testing means that we’ll find more cases and that’s OK, because finding more cases means we can contain the spread faster,” he said.
“We can’t manage what we can’t measure. The more people we test, the more contacts we can trace.”
Ontario has intended to do 16,000 tests per day throughout May, and while it has met that goal less than half of the time, the numbers have increased in recent days, with 18,525 tests reported Friday.
Levels dropped sharply once a blitz of nearly all long-termcare residents and staff was completed over the long weekend, but they have picked up again in recent days after the province relaxed criteria for members of the public to be tested.