The Dryden Regional Health Centre is experiencing a huge increase in the volume of calls and delays for COVID-19 testing.
DRHC received 300 calls in just one hour on Monday morning of this week.
CEO of DRHC Doreen Armstrong-Ross talks about what they’re looking to do next.
“We’re seeing a lot of activity and we’re having huge numbers of people coming to the assessment centre. Over the last couple days, we’ve been looking at the staffing and increasing hours later in the day and on weekends. Anything we can to alleviate that. We have put out a job ad for some assessment centre staff and EMS is going to help us out as well. But we are seeing upwards of about 40 patients a day in our assessment centre.”
Although it was expected since schools are back in session, Ross describes it as a challenging and busy few weeks as they’re seeing double the amount of people for testing, compared to the summer months.
DRHC is only agency in the community that offers an assessment centre and Ross notes people from out of town are also coming to them for tests.
“The calls come directly to us, the tests happen and the assessments happen. We’re also the ones who give out negative results, where as the Health Unit deals with positive results but we’re having to help whoever can’t go online and see the results, or if their physician isn’t giving their results. We are looking for partnerships. EMS has been good about that and we did have them at the beginning of COVID the volumes just weren’t there over the later part of the spring and summer and they pulled that. But they are giving us support back now. It’s been a challenge to staff extra areas we’re looking at and increasing hour sin very short period of time.”
Ross hopes some of the provincial announcements this week will also provide some relief in their assessment centre.
Since then, Ontario has updated its COVID-19 testing guidelines.
Ontarians should only seek testing at assessment centres if they are showing COVID-19 symptoms, have been exposed to a confirmed case of the virus or a resident or work in a setting that has an outbreak.
The goal is to prioritize those who are at the greatest risk, while shifting away from untargeted asymptomatic testing.
