If you’re flying into Toronto Pearson International Airport today, you may want to make a small change to your itinerary before you set foot in the city.
In fact, mandatory random COVID-19 is back at Canada’s busiest airport for fully vaccinated travelers.
The measure was halted through the federal government on June 11 and resumed Tuesday in Toronto, as well as at airports in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.
READ MORE: Canada Resumes Random COVID-19 Mandatory for Air Travelers
However, the procedure is different from the previous one.
In the past, travelers’ passports were randomly marked at customs for on-site testing.
Now, travelers who qualify as fully vaccinated will receive an email notification within 15 minutes of completing their customs declaration informing them that they have been selected for testing.
The test itself may not be conducted at Pearson, which is good news for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA), the organization that runs the airport that has been plagued by delays for months.
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People line up at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Thursday, May 12, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
If you receive an email after going through customs, the message will include information for you to set up a control in your area.
“In [the email], it says, ‘You’ve been chosen’ and goes to a pharmacy or company that has been decided to go there, or for a virtual home test. You have to do it within 24 hours and get the results, and then, of course, wait and see if it’s positive or negative,” Martin Firestone, president of Travel Secure Inc. , told CP24 Tuesday morning.
And if you test positive for COVID-19, you want to self-isolate for 10 days from the date of the test result, even if the isolation era in Ontario after a positive check is five days.
The rules that come into effect will not replace the procedure for partially vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers. These Americans will continue to be required to be tested upon arrival in the country and on the eighth day of their mandatory 14-day quarantine.
It’s unclear how long randomized COVID-19 testing will be available at Pearson, though a GTAA spokesperson told CTV News Toronto last week that switching to off-site sampling is “helpful. “
“This, combined with the CBSA’s backlog of personnel, has helped reduce wait times for aircraft that will have to be held on arrival due to the large number of passengers in the customs hall,” Gass said at the time.
Even though random testing will no longer be conducted at the site, Firestone says it’s still a “big drawback” if selected.
“No doubt many might reconsider the resolution to come to Canada. Not only the ArriveCan document, which is still there and many other people are not satisfied with it, load this into the combine now and it will have another layer, some other restriction, and it makes the adventure even more complicated when you come here,” he said.
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Canadian officials said the mandatory random tests are to stumble upon new variants entering the country. And, amid a seventh wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, it doesn’t look like the measure will be passed anywhere anytime soon.
Meanwhile, a new Ipsos ballot shows that 70 per cent of Canadians now the situation at the country’s airports “is embarrassing for Canada”, with only about 60 per cent of respondents avoiding flying until they see improvements.