It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
That’s the message from Friday’s COVID-19 briefing.
Dr. Robert Strang, Chief Medical Officer of Health, says COVID-19 numbers are likely much worse than what they’ve been able to report.
Dr. Strang says, he was made aware Thursday evening and Friday morning, they’re facing massive delays in data entry and testing; the central lab is swamped.
“About 45,000 tests have yet to be processed,” he says. “Things are about three days behind.”
Dr. Strang says the lab will be working overtime through the weekend to resolve the backlog.
In the meantime, he says, because of that, they’re asking people to cancel their PCR test appointments unless they have symptoms, have been exposed, or recently returned from travel.
“Those who need to get a PCR test and have to go to an assessment centre, they need to do that,” he says. “For those who don’t, those who have no symptoms, it’s critically important that you don’t clog up our system.”
He says this doesn’t include pop-up asymptomatic rapid testing.
Dr. Strang says those are a different kind of test, which doesn’t need to go through the lab, and he still encourages everyone to get one of those.