Grand River’s COVID testing site busy with new school rules
KITCHENER — Grand River Hospital’s COVID-19 testing site has been extra busy this week with the strict new screening rules for schools and daycares.
“Definitely a significant increase in students of all ages,” said Tal Kleiman, assistant manager of the site in the former downtown Kitchener bus terminal.
The number of people coming through the site has been steadily increasing since Saturday, just ahead of the new rules coming into effect on Monday.
The province requires that staff, students and children with any new or worsening symptom of COVID-19 — even just one — stay home until they receive a negative test result, an alternative diagnosis by a health-care professional, or it has been 10 days since symptom onset and they’re feeling better.
As well, all asymptomatic household contacts of a person with symptoms must quarantine until the symptomatic household member receives a negative test result or an alternative diagnosis.
Those new requirements are driving many people to Grand River’s site. Usually it sees 250 people daily on weekends, but the volume climbed to about 350 each day this past weekend.
Since then, the numbers have been climbing from almost 400 on Monday to 600 on Thursday.
“About a third of the individuals coming in are students,” said Kleiman, adding they either have symptoms or were potentially exposed to the virus. “We’re getting siblings and parents in the cars getting tested.”
The recent spike in testing is similar to back in September when classes resumed after an extended break and just one mild symptom was enough to require a test to go back to school. Added on top of that this time was the end of the provincewide shutdown.
“We were prepared for this surge,” Kleiman said.
The Kitchener drive-thru testing site — the biggest in Waterloo Region — has a capacity for 650 to 700 a day. Same-day appointments are still available, along with next-day ones. Generally people are tested within their one-hour time slot. Kleiman expects the volume will remain high as long as the one-symptom rule is in effect or until spring arrives when people suffer from less sickness.
“Until then we’ll be busy.”