Family laments long wait for COVID-19 test results

Jewish General says backlog was due to lack of staff

When Melissa Diamond found out her 18-year-old daughter had been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, she immediately went with her family of four to the drop-in testing clinic at the Jewish General Hospital.

The testing process on July 21 was efficient, taking less than an hour. Diamond was told she would have results within 24 to 72 hours.

When three days went by with no results, she dialed the number for the call centre provided to her by the nurse at the clinic and was told the wait time was five days.

She called again, and was told the first respondent had it wrong — the wait time was in fact six days. In the meantime, she kept her daughter in isolation, bringing her meals to her room, and the family quarantined themselves.

Diamond got her result six days after her test. It was negative. The other members of her family waited five days to get negative results.

“I cried when I found out,” said Diamond, who has an autoimmune disease that puts her at heightened risk for Covid-19-related complications. “The wait for results is excruciating and takes a psychological toll.”

A surge in tests and a lack of personnel due to summer holidays are to blame for wait times of five to six days, said Carl Thériault, a spokesman for the CIUSSS du Centre-ouest, the health authority responsible for the Jewish

General’s COVID -19 testing clinic.

Lab results are ready within 24 hours, but the clinic lacks staff to provide quick contact to the 600 to 800 people getting tested daily, four times the usual rate. Anyone who tests positive is contacted within 24 to 48 hours, Thériault said.

“The priority is to communicate positive test results, which we have been doing within a 24- to 48-hour delay,” Thériault said. “There is a backlog in communicating negative test results because of the volume of tests that has recently quadrupled and sudden need for additional staff.”

The clinic is trying to hire more staff and looking into an automated communication system to reduce wait times, Thériault added.

The walk-in clinic located outside the Jewish General was installed after a recommendation in early July from Montreal’s public health department that anyone who had been to a bar be tested led to lineups of five hours at the Hôtel-dieu testing site.

Test results at many sites are delivered within 24 hours, said Jean-nicolas Aubé, spokesman for the CIUSS Centre-sud. But results vary from clinic to clinic, depending on the number of tests given and personnel available.

Aubé noted that Montreal’s public health director, Mylène Drouin, has specified that individuals who have not knowingly come into close contact with someone with COVID-19 can continue to circulate in society after they’ve been tested, as long as they follow normal safety protocols like social distancing and wearing a mask.

“People think because they went to get tested they have to stay at home afterward,” Aubé said.

“It’s not true.”

Only individuals who have been contacted by public health officials saying they have or may have been in close contact with an infected person, or those showing symptoms or arriving from abroad, should quarantine themselves until they get their test results.

However, the email Diamond received from Montreal public health states that anyone who has been in close contact (inside of two metres for more than 15 minutes) with a positive case “MUST” stay in isolation for 14 days following their last contact with that person, and it’s recommended to be tested 12 days after that contact, “even if you’ve already been tested following your contact with that person.”

The directives are confusing and contradictory, Diamond said. To be safe, she intends to have her daughter tested again.