Local medical health officer urges Saskatoon residents to get tested for COVID-19 amid lower daily test counts

COVID-19 testing has seen a significant drop in Saskatoon since December — a trend that concerns a local medical health officer.

In December, some waited in their vehicles for up to six hours at the COVID-19 drive-thru testing site on Thatcher Avenue. That wait time is now often less than three hours. Saskatoon has capacity to test 1,000 people per day, but has only been seeing about 400 to 800 people daily since the new year, provincial data says.

"Testing, I think, really rests on people being motivated and understanding the risk and feeling there's some value out of getting tested," said Dr. Johnmark Opondo, a Saskatchewan Health Authority medical health officer in Saskatoon.

Fewer people may have gone for a COVID-19 test over the holidays because it could spoil their festivities, while some Saskatchewan residents may still have images in their mind of long lineups at testing facilities, he said. But ultimately anyone who is symptomatic, or is asymptomatic but deemed a close contact, should get tested.

Low testing "is a concern if we are missing individuals and if people are intentionally avoiding testing ... because part of our strategy is finding COVID. So the testing and being able to do our contact tracing, that helps us isolate the virus and stop this pandemic," said Opondo.

Opondo believes government officials have done a good job in pushing the public health messaging about COVID-19 testing and building the necessary infrastructure, he said.

But now that cases of the variant strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, first reported in the United Kingdom have been reported in Saskatchewan, testing is all the more important, he said.

The variants of the novel coronavirus first reported in the U.K. and South Africa are more transmissible — and potentially more deadly — than the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. More testing means Saskatchewan public health officials can better control the potential spread of any strain of the virus, Opondo says.

As of Wednesday, the Saskatoon zone has 532 known active COVID-19 cases — the most of any zone in the province.