Editor:
In the continuing fight against COVID-19 and its variants, experts say rapid tests can help minimize health risks for gatherings.
Albertans will soon be able to pick up free rapid tests. Pharmacies will be giving out a rapid test kit that includes five single-use rapid tests. One kit will be available per person, every two weeks, with tests to be used every 72 hours. To receive the kit, a person has to be asymptomatic and have a valid Alberta health care card.
Quebec will start handing out rapid tests on Dec. 20; Ontario is making up to 2 million rapid tests available in places such as transit hubs, shopping malls and liquor stores.
Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have handed out rapid tests for several weeks.
And in B.C.? The government will not begin distributing rapid tests (with the short nasal swab) until January.
Although B.C. received 3.2 million rapid tests in November 2020 and has distributed 1.17 million of them, the government has not been providing any rapid tests to the general public, despite having about two million in storage. Keep in mind that even though 1.17 million were "distributed," it doesn't mean all of them were used.
To date, how many rapid tests have actually been used in the province since November 2020?
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry debuted the phrase "Be kind, be calm and be safe" in March 2020. Since then Henry has used the phrase dozens of times in her press briefings. Perhaps it’s time for her to add: "be last."
B.C. Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie and B.C. Care Providers Association president Terry Lake had been calling for rapid testing of staff and visitors to long-term care homes since November 2020. Why didn't Dr. Henry and B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix require care home nurses and other staff to give ongoing rapid tests to all residents and workers from the get-go?
Although Dec. 14 marked the one-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 vaccines administered in Canada, they weren't delivered to all B.C. long-term care homes until the end of January 2021. The NIA Long Term Care COVID-19 Tracker (https://ltc-covid19-tracker.ca) currently lists 840 B.C. care home resident deaths due to COVID-19.
Also, why weren't rapid tests sent to all schools, beginning November 2020? Students and staff could have been tested by a staff member trained to administer a rapid test, just as every school is required to have staff members with First Aid and CPR training.
When Dr. Henry was asked at her Dec. 14 press briefing about the lack of rapid test availability, the reasons she gave were: supply chain issues, poor packaging, many tests require a health professional to administer a long NP swab [nasopharyngeal], and a machine is required to show the test result.
If anyone goes to the Public Health Agency of Canada website (www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/symptoms/testing/increased-supply.html) they will see the types of rapid tests that the federal government provided to British Columbia. Out of 3,200,306 tests: Abbott Panbio (2,180,850), Abbott ID Now (626,976), BD Veritor (389,880), and Lucira (2,600).
Henry: "All of these rapid tests have limitations.... There's examples from around the world. There's examples from here where people have done rapid testing and gone to large group gatherings indoors, where there's been a lot of transmission, despite everybody testing negative, so we can't rely on them for that sort of single use -- 'I'll just test myself and I'm fine.'"
It appears Dr. Henry is engaging in fallacious arguments to defend her decision not to distribute these rapid tests to the general public. Today's fun fact: Rapid tests were never designed to be a single use test!
Michael Mina is an epidemiologist, assistant professor at Harvard School of Public Health. On Sept. 5/21 he wrote on Twitter: "A goal of a rapid test program is to keep 9 out of 10 infectious people from walking into a train station and infecting others. Medicine has nothing to do with this. MDs have no training for this. It's a Public Health Engineering problem -- not medicine."
Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Faculty of Information (University of Toronto) has said the rapid test "answers the most important question, which is: 'Are you a risk to other people right now?' That's the question it answers, and it does it extremely well, close to 100 per cent."
Henry said about 700,000 of the rapid tests could be taken home, but are presently in larger packs of 25 or 35 that can’t easily be broken down, and come with a single bottle of testing solution. This begs the question: Why weren't people hired or tasked as soon as the rapid tests arrived, to begin separating the test kits into smaller units of 5?
Dr. Victor Leung is an infectious diseases physician, medical microbiologist, and clinical associate professor in UBC's Faculty of Medicine. After the Henry/Dix press briefing, Leung said in a CHEK News interview: “The response from the provincial government and the public health teams with respect to rapid antigen tests does not make a lot of sense and it also seems that the answers shift in terms of why we're not using them. It is not very consistent."
Leung said only one of the four tests (Abbott ID Now) actually requires a machine to show the results. He also said Abbott Panbio kits that contain the long NP swab can simply be replaced with nasal swab tests. “It’s replaceable, the manufacturer allows for that,” Leung said. "So, it’s not something that’s not doable."
With Roberta Flack's 1973 hit single "Killing Me Softly with His Song" serving as inspiration, (youtube.com/watch?v=DEbi_YjpA-Y) what follows is my song rewrite:
Telling Us Softly with Her Calm
Chorus:
Scrummin' our brains as she lingers
Stringin' our time with her words
Telling us softly with her calm
Telling us softly with her calm
Takin' her whole time with her words
Telling us softly with her calm
We heard she had a good calm
We heard she had a style
And so we came to see her
To listen for a while
And there she was this expert
A doctor to advise
Scrummin' our brains as she lingers...
I felt all flushed with fever
Needed to leave the crowd
I could not find my questions
To read each one out loud
I prayed that she would finish
But she just kept right on
Scrummin' our brains as she lingers...
She talked as if she knew us
Like the voice at Carousel
No rapid tests for the public
The millions kept on shelves
And she just kept on talkin'
Talkin' 'bout Omicron
Scrummin' our brains as she lingers...
She was scrummin' our brains
Yeah, she was stringin' our time
Readin' the data with her calm
Telling us softly with her calm
Takin' her whole time with her words
Telling us softly to be strong
David Buckna, Kelowna
