Horizon Health has provided more details about the temporary testing centre they’ve opened at the Tantramar Veterans Memorial Civic Centre in Sackville.
Since it opened on January 26, local area residents have reported issues with getting appointments at the testing centre. Complaints have included long delays in getting call backs or appointments, and the inability to select the Sackville location on the province’s online request form.
Horizon’s VP Community, Jean Daigle, says in an emailed statement that the health network has been, “gradually increasing capacity at our temporary, appointment-only COVID-19 assessment centre in Sackville in an effort to balance the availability of staffing resources with community demand for testing.”
Daigle says that as of Wednesday, February 3, Horizon has been able to perform 45 swabs per day, “more than double the daily capacity from the week before.”
“There is, however, a current backlog of 79 appointments,” says Daigle. “We anticipate we will be able to work through most of the backlog by early next week.”
Daigle says people also have the option of being tested at the primary assessment centre for Zone 1, at the Moncton Coliseum.
The Sackville testing site is available by appointment only (like all other testing sites), and currently runs from 1pm to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday. In order to get an appointment at the site, people need to first select the Moncton Coliseum site on the province’s COVID-19 test request online form. Then when a Horizon rep calls back, they can ask for the Sackville location.
People who have selected the Moncton Georges-Dumont hospital in their online form have found they need to wait for an extra step, as those requests go to the Vitalité network, which then must refer requests for the Sackville location over to Horizon.
That process may soon get simplified, with Sackville added as an online request option, says Daigle.
“We are working to add these temporary assessment centres as an option for selection in the online COVID-19 testing request form operated by the Government of New Brunswick in the coming days,” says Daigle.
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