After several days of long queues and a day after London’s COVID-19 assessment centres reached capacity before their final time, the Middlesex-London Health Unit is making some changes.
The Oakridge Arena and Carling Heights Optimist Center assessment centers operated on a first-come, first-served basis, but officials will now “prioritize patients with symptoms, those requiring medical testing, and case contacts. “
“Today’s assessment centres in London will prevent tests on others who don’t have symptoms and haven’t been exposed,” said Chris Mackie, a health medical officer.
“It will actually replace the volume of evidence and, as other people perceive it, you will see fewer queues. “
Mackie said a close construction is expected, but not so soon.
“(There’s) a lot of data suggesting we’d see a wave of momentary activity,” Mackie said.
“But other people have increased their point of anxiety and are being evaluated more than even the accumulation of the disease we’re seeing lately would justify it. So, yes, this definitely happened before you think the total formula is ready.
Mackie stated that if you have symptoms that may be COVID-19 or if you have been in contact with a shown case, it is vital that a test is done. In addition, some Americans require surgical tests or family circle visits at long-term care facilities.
[Subscribe to our Health IQ newsletter for coronavirus updates]
“We have difficulty having other people who have been in contact with a case examined because of those queues for several hours. We know that testing other people who have no symptoms and don’t have significant exposure is very, very low comeback. “
Mackie also expects that, in addition to the new protocols, this capability will also increase.
“I have to point out that fitness doesn’t work in evaluation centers,” he said.
“They are controlled through Thames Valley Family Health and the London Health Sciences Centre in partnership with paramedical service. We’re involved, but it’s Health Ontario, which is the new provincial super agency, that oversees the centers and says that the care partners who are mobilizing to do those tests, which, you know, congratulate them, have done a wonderful task in that regard.
Steve Shelby among those who lined up for hours at Oakridge Arena on Tuesday and lately is expecting results.
“Very funny, my son had a runny nose at daycare and then they deported him, so I had to take a check to verify that he did not have COVID,” he told Global News.
He says he, his wife and their two children arrived around 8:20 a. m. (the venue opens at 9 a. m. ) and were examined until after 1:30 p. m.
“They said to get you to 8 a. m. and you’re probably first in line. But obviously that wasn’t the case,” he said.
“There was a nurse who turned the car numbers around nine and a quarter, so it took about an hour to see someone.
Shelby commented that when they were still tested, the doctors were great and the nurses excellent, but the wait itself was huge.
Fortunately, he says, his in-laws are nearby, so his wife took the young men’s house while he waited while he stayed in the car.
“But if other people didn’t have that option, it would surely be horrible. As if we had lasted about an hour and then they couldn’t do it anymore. “