The Chief Medical Officers of Health for Air Canada, Toronto Pearson, and WestJet have sent an open letter to the federal government to reallocate PCR tests from airports to community use.
Right now, travellers arriving at airports across Canada are randomly selected to receive either PCR or rapid tests upon arrival. Over 123,000 PCR tests were conducted at Canadian airports this past week.
If selected for a PCR test, international travellers must go immediately to their place of isolation, and wait for test results. Those results are supposed to arrive within 72 hours, but this doesn’t seem to be the case for some travellers.
“It took nine days for me to get my test back for them to tell me it was negative,” said Zahrya Musgrove.
Musgrove travelled to Turks and Caicos over the holidays to visit family. On her return to Canada, she had to have a negative COVID-19 test 72 hours before her departure, and then was randomly selected in Toronto to take another test upon arrival.
“I isolated until I got my test result, which is what they suggested in the pamphlet I got,” she said.
International travellers were asked to isolate until given their test results. If negative, they could leave isolation. If positive, travellers had to isolate for 10 days from the date of their test.
“I was isolating for almost a week more than I was supposed to, only for it to come back negative,” Musgrove said.
“It was a waste of my time,” she said in an interview this week.
According to the this week’s statement from the Chief Medical Officers, the average positivity rate for passenger tests at airports across Canada is three per cent. Meanwhile, the positivity rate in the general population is approximately 30 per cent, although owing to lack of tests, this number is not accurate.
That is why the officers called on the government to end mandatory arrival tests at airports and instead redistribute them among schools, communities, and the healthcare system.
“There is a growing discrepancy between resources allocated to asymptomatic travellers and to those who need it most,” the letter read.
“Removing arrivals PCR testing from Toronto Pearson airport alone would free up 8,000 tests a day for the GTA, which will help keep our most vulnerable safe.”
Health Canada on Tuesday said it did not agree with the open letter, and said it would continue with testing at airports across the country.
“Border testing is a critical part of Canada’s COVID-19 surveillance strategy, which will help detect variants of concern and vaccine-escape variants. Even fully vaccinated individuals can still become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19,” Health Canada said in a statement.
“For this reason, it is important to continue taking precautions by testing travellers both prior to entry and on arrival.”