'Cancelled' COVID-19 test results just 'unfortunate use of wording,' Manitoba official says

Manitobans whose COVID-19 test results showed up as cancelled don't need to worry about waiting in line again — those swabs are still being processed, Central Services Minister Reg Helwer says.

That message appears when someone's sample is sent to a lab that's at capacity, which means it then gets shipped to a different site for testing, Helwer said at an online technical briefing with reporters Thursday morning.

"So [it's] an unfortunate use of wording in the response that people get. The test is not cancelled. It's just moved to another lab for processing," he said.

"That result will come back to those individuals."

This week, some people logged on to the province's online test results page and found that instead of a message saying they'd tested positive or negative, the screen showed the message "result cancelled."

That message triggered confusion and frustration among people waiting for their results, especially as many waited for hours in line to get their swab done. 

One of those people was Veda Koncan, whose three-year-old daughter Adria went for a test on Dec. 23 after developing symptoms consistent with COVID-19.

"There weren't appointments available until after nine, so it was a bit of a struggle getting through the evening until we could get there to get her tested," Koncan told CBC.

On top of it being well past Adria's bedtime, it wasn't the first time she had been tested, so her mother says she wasn't in the best of spirits that night.

"She knows that test and fears that test, so we have to physically restrain her for her to get the test and it's really unpleasant for both her and us."

After making it through that ordeal, Koncan says she was shocked to receive a notification the next day that her daughter's test results had been cancelled.

"I was scared that it meant that due to the backlog maybe things weren't getting tested anymore," she said. "I was scared I'd have to do it again."

WATCH | Manitobans frustrated by 'cancelled' test results:

Manitobans frustrated by 'cancelled' COVID-19 test results

3 years ago

Duration 2:05

This week, some people logged on to Manitoba's online COVID-19 test results page and found that instead of a message saying they'd tested positive or negative, the screen showed the message 'result cancelled,' CBC's Sheila North reports.

As it turned out, Adria was spared the unpleasantness of another nasopharyngeal swab when Koncan was able to get a rapid test through her employer, which came up negative. But that result wasn't good enough to let her daughter return to daycare, so she's had to take an unwanted week away from her job at a non-profit.

"I agree with every policy … to protect children and child-care workers because there is not enough in place to protect them," she said.

"But if I can't access PCR testing I can't access child care, and if just kind of feels like I've fallen down a loophole."

The province did not immediately respond to questions about how many people were affected.

On Wednesday, Opposition NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine said on Twitter one of her family members had gotten the message too, which left them "upset and confused."

"What in the actual heck is going on out there?!" Fontaine wrote.

As of Wednesday, Manitoba still had a backlog of 10,700 specimens from COVID-19 tests, as the province deals with the impact of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant, Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said at a news conference that day.

Meanwhile, the turnaround time for test results was up to a full seven days, up from roughly 18 hours a few weeks ago.

The same day, the province also announced it had reached a deal with a private Winnipeg laboratory to increase Manitoba's COVID-19 testing capacity by nearly 30 per cent by the end of the week.

In Thursday's technical briefing, Helwer said Winnipeg firm BioScision Diagnostics responded to a request for proposals to boost testing capacity that was posted six months ago.

He said the province is still working to create more testing capacity, but provided few details about what that might look like.

"We are rapidly setting up capacity as we speak. This is something we've been working on for a long time," Helwer said.

"There is an insatiable demand for tests and rapid tests throughout the world right now. We are not alone in this. And we're watching what other people did and setting up that capacity as quickly as we can."