The province is rolling out COVID-19 testing to 60 pharmacies across Ontario, starting today, but Chatham-Kent likely won’t see any benefit.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Colby says with low active cases and no real community spread, the municipality isn’t considered a high need area right now.
“Asymptomatic people, people who have no exposure history, so they’re not part of an outbreak investigation, typically and especially in Chatham-Kent, have a very low positivity rate,” Colby says. “We seldom ever get positives that we’re not expecting, that are just a complete surprise out of the blue.
Colby says the idea behind allowing COVID testing at pharmacies is to take the load off assessment centres in hot-spots like the GTA and Ottawa, where testing centres are seeing long lines and wait periods.
In the meantime, Colby says he expects flu vaccines, which will still be administered in drug stores around Chatham-Kent, to start arriving in the next few weeks.