Not all airports ready to give new COVID tests
New directives will take time, federal health minister says
Not all Canadian airports will have the capacity to immediately begin testing arriving air travellers from countries other than the United States for COVID-19, the federal health minister said Wednesday.
Ottawa announced on Tuesday that all air travellers entering Canada, except for those coming from the U.S., would need to be tested for COVID-19 upon arrival at the airport and isolate until they get their results, even if they are fully vaccinated against the virus.
The stricter measures come as public health officials around the world warn of the potentially dangerous new Omicron variant of COVID-19.
“The directive to put that into place is now active. So the direction is given as of yesterday. And of course that will take time to implement; it will take time,” Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Wednesday. “The speed of implementation will also vary in local airport conditions. There are airports in Canada which can start doing that really quickly because there is excess capacity. Other airports will take a bit more time.”
Duclos didn’t offer any additional details on when the full testing would be up and running. Officials in his department were unable to offer a specific timeline.
On Tuesday, as he and other cabinet colleagues unveiled the new testing measures, Duclos made clear the federal government would cover the costs of the tests, and that all previous COVID-19 testing requirements would remain in place.
The other unknown hanging in the air Wednesday was whether Canada would require currently exempt American air travellers from the testing requirement, or whether the U.S. would reimpose its own travel ban on Canada given that British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Alberta have all reported cases of Omicron — all involving people who recently returned from Nigeria.
The federal government has also closed its border to foreign nationals who have recently travelled through 10 African countries, including Nigeria.
Experts suspect it will take weeks before scientists know whether Omicron is more transmissible, leads to more severe disease, or is capable of evading vaccine protection.