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Alberta's Health Minister Tyler Shandro (Government of Alberta - YourAlberta on YouTube)

Province expands rapid COVID testing to include vulnerable Albertans

Dec 17, 2020 | 9:36 AM

CALGARY, AB – The Alberta government is expanding rapid COVID-19 testing.

Testing will be expanded to reach Albertans in homeless shelters, long-term care facilities and remote rural communities.

Starting December 18, rapid point-of-care testing will start at long-term care and designated supportive living facilities in the Edmonton Health Zone using mobile testing centres.

Mobile testing centres are slated to deploy in the Calgary Zone starting the week of December 21.

They will first be focused on outbreak sites. Expansion to long-term care and designated supportive living facilities outside of the Edmonton and Calgary zones is expected to follow shortly after.

“Alberta’s COVID-19 testing program is critical to managing and preventing the spread of the virus in our communities. Bringing rapid point-of-care testing directly to the locations where it can help protect the health of the most vulnerable Albertans is an important addition to our provincial testing system,” said Alberta’s Health Minister Tyler Shandro.

The expansion of rapid testing to new locations across the province is expected to offer fast and more convenient testing, helping identify and isolate positive cases quicker than what has been possible up to this point.

More than 1,000 people have received the rapid tests at assessment centres and hospital locations so far, including 76 positive cases who were notified about their results within a few hours of their test.

“Alberta Precision Laboratories and Alberta Health Services have undertaken significant work to evaluate the effectiveness of rapid point-of-care testing systems and how they can add the most value to our province-wide COVID-19 testing program,” said Mauro Chies, board chair of Alberta Precision Laboratories and vice-president of Cancer Care Alberta and Clinical Support Services for Alberta Health Services.

“Our integrated provincial lab service allows us to quickly implement and scale up the use of new equipment and processes for the benefit of all Albertans.”

The expansion of the rapid-testing clinical pilot started the week of December 7, with the deployment of systems at the first non-Alberta Health Services site, Calgary’s Drop-In Centre and Edmonton’s isolation facility – where staff nurses have been trained to use the systems with homeless shelter clients who are difficult to reach through the existing COVID testing programs. Work is underway to bring the systems to more homeless shelters in rural and urban areas in the coming weeks.

“Having COVID-19 testing in-house is incredibly valuable for us to monitor the health of our clients and protect our staff and the public as we manage outbreaks at our facility,” said Sandra Clarkson, executive director at the Calgary Drop-In Centre.

“I extend my gratitude and thanks to Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services for recognizing the need to prioritize our community’s homeless population and for the government’s continued support throughout this pandemic.”

Further expansion also includes the addition of rapid point-of-care testing at 25 rural hospitals in AHS’ North, Central and South zones throughout the rest of December and early January. Currently, patient samples in those more remote and rural communities are transported to centralized public laboratories for analysis.

Since March, the province has completed 2.5 million tests on more than 1.5 million people.

Thursday morning’s announcement from Health Minister Tyler Shandro can be viewed below.

(YourAlberta on YouTube)

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