BY PAUL JUNOR
The Ontario government announced in late October that Ontario students in public schools would be provided with rapid COVID-19 antigen tests that could be used over the winter holiday break. However, key questions about rapid COVID-19 tests-including how, where, and even when to get them, continue to confound politicians and regular citizens alike.
There has been much support for giving out the standardized “test to stay” program to students before the winter break. The article revealed that Ontario’s science table indicated on Thursday, December 9th, 2021, that voluntary screening with the rapid COVID-19 test would curtail the transmission in younger kids, even in the midst of the prevalence of the Delta variant.
The guidance that was released recommends that if there is a threshold of thirty-five cases per 100,000 per week then there should be voluntary testing of both vaccinated and unvaccinated people every week. This would ensure that students who are asymptomatic would remain in school even if there were positive cases. This would be the benefit of the “test to stay” program, which would ensure that students continue their daily schooling without interruption.
There has been some controversy regarding whether rapid testing would make a difference in keeping students in the classrooms if they were asymptomatic and unvaccinated. Public health officials have noted the fact that these tests are relatively inexpensive, easily done, and less accurate than the PCR test. Many have expressed concerns about the lack of guidance that these students have been given when they take the five rapid tests home for the winter break. Students should be able to perform the rapid tests during the break and before their return to school in the New Year.
Dr Barry Pakes, Medical Officer of Health for York Region states, “If (testing) is in the hands of everyone, which is great, and makes people feel much, much better and much more in control, what that does is, unfortunately, open up opportunities to break that case and contact management.”
There are concerns that if the rapid test results in positive results, it may potentially prevent them from going ahead and doing the PCR test, which would give more accurate and relevant information for public health officials. Several Toronto doctors expressed their support for testing students as a way to ensure that they will continue to make academic and social improvements, which will be impacted if there is a lockdown.
Dr Alanna Golden, a primary care physician, extols the benefits of rapid tests as providing the same advantages by curtailing the transmission of COVID-19 identical to isolation. She references the results of a study from Lancet, which examined 201 schools in England and found out that daily testing and isolation were comparative to curtail the same level of transmission. Dr Golden states,” No one is going to say it’s perfect No one’s going to say that we’re not going to miss one positive COVID case. Nothing is perfect, but at the end of the day, everything is a risk-benefit analysis.”
