WINDSOR, ONT. -- Almost 800 people took advantage of a two-day drive-thru testing blitz at St. Clair College.
“We knew there would be an increased demand,” Karen Riddell, Windsor Regional Hospital vice president of critical care, said of the reason behind the blitz.
The demand for testing set a new single-day record Monday with 658 tests administered.
Health officials anticipate that demand will double by this time next month — for one simple reason — symptoms of COVID-19 mimic those of allergies, colds, and the flu.
“It’s going to be very challenging to differentiate between your average running nose and cough and we normally will see,” said Riddell. “We do on a regular season, our pediatric unit gets very busy a couple weeks after school starts.”
WRH president and CEO David Musyj said children have been generally been “taken out of the equation,” as schools shut have been shut down since March.
Musyj was on hand Tuesday helping staff.
“If they have to do this I should be doing this as well and helping them as best I can and trying not to get in their way,” he said.
Musyj tells CTV News the temporary college assessment centre could become a permanent testing site, should demand overwhelm the other testing sites in the area.
“Talk here and staff and we say ‘wouldn’t it be interesting if a year from now we’re standing here doing the same thing’ and the chances of that are more real than not real,” he said.
At the same time, health care staff are working out the testing kinks before the school bell rings.
“So if there’s an outbreak in a school we’re going to be able to handle the volume and demand for testing from the parents, from the school system, from public health, and hopefully get cases identified or rules out and get people back to school, back to class, back to work,” Riddell said.
