The frustration is palpable in Joan’s voice, as over the phone from Nova Scotia she recounts how her husband never received the results of his at-home COVID-19 test from Switch Health after he returned to Canada on a recent flight from a country in Africa.
And she is incredulous that no one is doing anything about the numerous complaints on the company’s Facebook page about delayed results for the 10-day test, which is self-administered at home in front of a nurse who watches online to ensure it’s done properly. The mandatory testing has been contracted out to Switch Health by the federal government.
The complaints range from travellers getting stuck in quarantine past the two-week mark, often on their own dime, to waiting in the online queue for hours to take the test and getting inexplicably kicked off by the computer system, only to go to the back of the line with hundreds of people in front.
In the end, Joan and her husband ended their quarantine after 24 days without ever knowing if his 10-day test was positive or negative, despite assurances from Switch Health that they had received his swab via Purolator. (Joan is her middle name. The Star is not identifying her because her husband has to travel frequently for work and wants to avoid issues with border control.)
“Every time we contacted them, they said, ‘oh, any moment now. It’s in process,’ ” said Joan. “And everybody else says the same thing. They say that they’re just told ‘in process, in process, in process.’ Or if it gets really late, they tell you they’re going to investigate,” she said. “And so we just gave up.”
What’s more, the delays in testing come at a time when new variants are entering the country.
On Thursday, the premiers of Ontario and Quebec called on Ottawa to reduce the number of international flights arriving in Canada and impose greater restrictions at the U.S. land border after B.1.617, a variant of interest that originated in India, was found in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec.
In response, the federal government banned flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days.
Meanwhile, the volume of air travel in Canada is set to increase next month.
Air Canada is resuming a number of domestic and international flights in May and June. WestJet has plans to increase flights in June. And with that, comes other movement in the industry, such as limo companies, which are planning to resume airport shuttles around the Golden Horseshoe.
The federal government won’t say whether the three-day mandatory hotel quarantine, at four major airports where travellers wait to find out the results of their first COVID test after arrival, will continue past its April 30 deadline.
But health experts question why the volume of air travel needs to increase at this time.
“I don’t think we’re at a place where we should be considering travel,” said Dr. Susy Hota, medical director of infection prevention and control at Toronto’s University Health Network. And if we were, she says, “we would have to be strict about it — a full 14 days quarantine with testing. That would be the only way that we could do it.”
Air Canada currently operates about 80 flights each week. Another 100 are run by its regional partner Jazz, and there are another 30 to 40 cargo-only flights per day.
In May, the airline will resume weekly flights to destinations that include Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Mexico City, Bogota, Kingston and Orlando. And in June, the airline will add more overseas flights as wells as flights to U.S. destinations. The number of domestic flights will also increase.
There are U.S. and international carriers also flying out of Pearson to most of these destinations.
In an email, Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick said the flights are resuming because there is a “demand.”
The airline carries “people who need to go places, including those who need to fly to get to work destinations, and important cargo, such as PPE, medical supplies, vaccines, commercial products such as food and other Canadian exports, and even honeybees to support Canada’s agriculture business,” said Fitzpatrick.
“We continue to advocate for safe travel and a measured, science-based approach to reopening the country for travel.”
Air Canada implemented pre-flight temperature checks and mask wearing ahead of government mandates, says Fitzpatrick. And the airline is in favour of “effective testing and appropriate quarantine use … until the benefits of vaccines are more widespread.”
Currently, when international travellers arrive at one of four airports in Canada, including Pearson, they are required to book into a quarantine hotel to await the results of their first COVID test. Travellers are still required to quarantine for 14 days, and do a second test at home on day 10. If the test is positive, Jane said the test instructions say to quarantine for another two weeks.
The federal government wouldn’t say when asked in an email if the quarantine program would continue.
The government is “continually evaluating the impacts of border measures, in collaboration with our provincial and territorial partners, and industry stakeholders, based on the most recent evidence and the current epidemiological situation,” Tammy Jarbeau, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada, said in an email last week.
“As more evidence emerges, public health authorities will make appropriate adjustments to recommendations regarding public health measures.”
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Switch Health didn’t reply to a request for comment on the complaints about the delays in test results.
According to preliminary data from the federal government, around 1,850 air travellers tested positive on arrival in a six-week period beginning Feb. 22. Another 89 land travellers also tested positive.
Although the numbers are a small percentage of the international travellers who have been tested — less than 2 per cent — they’re still significant, says Colin Furness, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto. A pilot project run by the provincial government in January found a slightly larger proportion, just over two per cent of international travellers, were testing positive.
“Two per cent is a small proportion,” said Furness. “But when you apply it to a really large number, like the number of people travelling, it’s really terrifying.”
Another 630 air travellers have been ticketed for failing to comply with mandatory isolation orders under the Quarantine Act from March 25 of last year to April 7, 2021.
The Public Health Agency didn’t release the results of the 10-day COVID test.
“We are unable to provide the day 10 testing numbers as the analysis is ongoing,” said Jarbeau.
There hasn’t been extensive research on the spread of COVID aboard planes, but a couple of recent studies by the Aviation Public Health Initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health say airlines have mitigated the risk by implementing measures such as mask wearing and enhanced cleaning.
And Furness says ventilation in airplanes is effective because it comes in at ceiling level and is directed downwards to the floor.
In Air Canada planes, that air passes through Hepa filters and is exchanged 20 to 30 times an hour.
But Furness says all it takes is for a passenger to sneeze, or remove their mask during meal service, for the safety efforts to be undone.
“We should have discovered more transmission in airplanes if they weren’t relatively safe,” said Furness. “But here’s the problem. Then comes meal service. Everyone’s mask is off. Or you’re waiting to be de-iced. They have to turn off the engines for that.”
There is on-board meal service on Air Canada flights, although it has been reduced, and Fitzpatrick acknowledges that it’s impossible to physically distance.
Furness says that “even if no one ever caught (COVID) on an airplane — and, of course, there have been very clearly documented cases — but even if that had never happened, air travel is dangerous for population mixing.
“For taking someone who’s got one variant and flying them across the world so they can spread it elsewhere.”