No answers as to why there are COVID-19 test delays
Those who’ve reached out to The Spec with concerns were all tested at the Mountain drive-thru centre
Hamilton’s drive-thru testing centre is emerging as the consistent in Hamiltonians’ tales of frustration and grief over long delays for negative COVID-19 test results.
Some residents say they were warned away from the site by city staff aware of turnaround time lags. Others went to different sites for second tests and received results within a day or two.
Officially, the root cause of delays remains unknown.
For two weeks, Hamiltonians have raised concerns about long wait times — 12 days or more — for negative COVID test results. Some are trying to visit loved ones in long-term care homes and need a negative result within 14 days of the test, while others just want to hold their grandkids with relative confidence they don’t have the virus.
The similarity in the cases of five residents who spoke with The Spectator is this: they all got tested at the Dave Andreychuk Mountain Arena drivethru testing centre.
Still, it’s not clear if delay issues are connected to the centre itself, the lab the samples are taken to, the online portal through which people access their results or somewhere else along the processing chain.
But what is clear, at least to one man who took a test nine days ago and still doesn’t have his results, is “it’s getting ridiculous.”
Ancaster resident Herb Campbell just wanted to get a test to feel better about hugging his granddaughter for the first time in four months.
“We’re trying to be careful,” Campbell said, noting that his daughter has been “very, very careful” to protect her family from COVID.
But with bubbling now allowed, the family had planned for Campbell’s granddaughter, who lives in Barrie and is five years old, to visit overnight with her grandparents in July. In order to feel extra safe, his daughter and granddaughter got tested in Barrie in late June. They received their negative results within two days.
Campbell and his wife wanted to do the same. They went to the Mountain drive-thru on June 30. His wife received negative results two days later. Nine days later, he’s still waiting for his.
Hamilton public health says it’s aware of turnaround times delays for residents awaiting negative results — positive results are being turned around within 24 hours, typically — and people awaiting negative tests these days are “almost always” facing a 10-day delay, if not longer. But public health says it doesn’t know what’s causing the delays. It has no control over test result processing — that’s handled by the labs.
How testing works in Hamilton
When someone calls public health to book a COVID test in Hamilton, they’re typically booked at the assessment centre in the east end at 2725 King St. E., the assessment centre in the west end at 690 Main St. W. or the Mountain drive-thru testing centre at 25 Hester St.
Tests from the east and west end centres are processed by the Hamilton Regional Laboratory Medicine Program (HRLMP), a joint service provided by St. Joseph’s Healthcare
Hamilton and Hamilton Health Sciences. The lab turnaround time is less than 24 hours, said St. Joe’s spokesperson Maria Hayes. Tests from the Mountain drive-thru centre are processed either by the HRLMP or the Hamilton Public Health lab — which is actually a provincially run lab. From the public health lab, “it is possible that a specimen may be moved further to other labs depending on capacity,” said Hamilton public health spokesperson Michelle Williams in a June 30 email.
Asked if results come back faster from one testing site versus others, Williams said “not necessarily.”
“We do our best to expedite testing for essential service workers, including health-care workers but otherwise it is dependent upon the capacity of the lab,” she said.
Local issues persist
Stoney Creek resident Wendy Hayes was looking forward to visiting her 88-year-old mother, who lives in an assisted-living facility, for the first time in months. She booked an appointment for herself and her husband June 22 at the Mountain drive-thru centre. She waited just two days for her negative COVID test result. Her husband waited 10 days.
With a shrinking window — provincial guidelines require the visitors be tested within 14 days of a visit — Hayes called public health to book a second test.
“They recommended we try (the east-end centre),” she said, “They said that there seemed to be a backlog with Hester Street (the Mountain centre).”
She received her new result within a day, her husband got his within two.
As for Campbell, the family decided not to wait for his negative result before seeing his granddaughter — he has no symptoms, is rarely out in public and was confident if his wife was negative, he likely was too. He hugged his granddaughter for the first time in months on Saturday.
“It was pretty special,” he said.