Airport COVID-19 testing for travellers arriving in Canada could start any time, minister says

OTTAWA -- The new on-arrival COVID-19 testing and isolation requirements for all air travellers coming from outside of Canada other than from the United States could come into effect at any time, depending on the airport, according to Health Minister -ean-Yves Duclos. Speaking to reporters on his way into the House of Commons, Duclos said that the directive to implement the new policy has been given, and now it’s up to each airport where international flights are landing to get the logistics in place.“There are airports in Canada which can start doing that really quickly because they have excess capacity, other airports will take a bit more time,” he said. On Tuesday the federal government announced that international travellers will soon be tested at the airport when they land in Canada, on top of the existing pre-departure test requirement. Now, Duclos said that if an upon-arrival test is not possible, travellers would be given a take-home test. “While they wait for that test to be known, they isolate themselves and when they get a negative test, they can exit out of the isolation,” he said. According to the government, those who are vaccinated would have to isolate until they get a negative result, and those who are unvaccinated will continue to have to isolate for the full 14 days and test on day one and day eight of their quarantine.

While currently it takes an average of one day to receive test results, Duclos said that the “service standard” is three days and it could take longer to get results once this policy is fully operational, with the expectation being that officials will be conducting approximately 32,000 tests per day... Source: ctvnews.ca/