When Emily Austin woke up to cold symptoms in her two young children last Monday, she didn’t expect she would be working from home for the week, but that’s what happened. Austin is one of many parents in Sackville dealing with kids home from daycare and school, waiting on test results from a stressed system.
After requesting tests for her kids last Monday morning, Austin says she got a call back to schedule an appointment on Wednesday afternoon. The tests themselves happened Thursday morning in Moncton, but the results weren’t shared until Sunday morning, six days after her initial request. Luckily, they were both negative.
“That meant between my husband and I, we missed a full week of work for two kids with mild colds,” says Austin. “One of the kids was better by Tuesday afternoon. In the non-pandemic world, I would have sent him back to daycare because he was asymptomatic by Tuesday afternoon,” she says.
Local social media is filling up with similar stories: parents waiting days for appointments, and days for results, and kids home from daycare or school for a week or more as a result. One parent says its been seven days since she first requested a test online, and she has yet to get a call to book an appointment.
RESOURCES RAMPING UP TO MEET DEMAND, SAYS RUSSELL
Up until this week, Sackville’s assessment centre has been only open part-time, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Though Horizon has extended hours to keep it open Thursday this week, in response to a high demand for testing.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Jennifer Russell said Monday that some assessment staff had been reassigned after the third wave in New Brunswick, when demand for testing was low. Russell indicated that what people are experiencing now is a lag in ramping up resources as the demand grows in the fourth wave as it finally hits New Brunswick.
On Wednesday, Horizon Health issued a status report on its operations, directly addressing COVID-19 testing capacity:
“With the recent spike in cases, our COVID-19 Assessment Centres are experiencing an increase in testing requests. We ask everyone to please be patient as our teams across the province work diligently to ensure everyone requiring a test is seen.
We are prioritizing urgent requests, such as those who are close contacts with confirmed positive cases and those who are symptomatic. Urgent requests should be booked within 24 hours; others may wait a few days to receive an appointment. We have increased hours of operation and are exploring alternative testing options to increase capacity.
We are working to onboard or redeploy upwards of 300 staff members to fulfill the COVID-19 testing and vaccination demands in our province.”
29 CASES AND COUNTING IN SACKVILLE REGION
Since Monday, September 13, the Sackville region has seen roughly 29 cases of COVID-19 reported, with possibly more to come this week. The lion’s share of those are at the Drew Nursing Home, but there are also cases connected with Tantramar Regional High School, Port Elgin Regional School, Mount Allison University, and the Wiggles and Giggles Early Learning Centre. And because each case begets close contacts who in turn require testing, the demand for testing has increased. Add in the normal and expected cold and flu season, as well as the reduced resources at testing centres after the third wave passed, and it’s the perfect storm for a backlog.
Of course delays are not new. Austin says her family also experienced a testing delay in August, and was told in future to request a test in a Moncton assessment centre, because of the reduced hours in Sackville.
The situation is stressful and frustrating, says Austin, but it could be worse for other families. “My husband and I are very lucky,” she says. “We are two-parent family. And we have the sort of jobs that, at least on paper, you can do at home. And so we get paid, right? I really don’t have anything to complain about on that front,” says Austin. “Although I will say it is exceedingly difficult to accomplish work at home with two young kids, especially when they’re not sick anymore.”
But for families with one parent, no childcare, or jobs that don’t compensate for sick or care time, the situation can be more difficult to navigate. “When you’re waiting for a test, you don’t even have the test booked yet, you don’t even know what the horizon is and how long it’s going to be… I can’t imagine how difficult it would be,” says Austin.
AT-HOME, RAPID TESTING AS A POSSIBLE SOLUTION
“I understand the rationale behind the rules,” says Austin, referring to the instruction for kids with two or more COVID symptoms to stay home. “We do have COVID in Sackville, and I think it’s important that rule is followed. But I think it would be a huge help for families if we could have at-home testing in this province.”
Austin would like to see rapid test kits made available to families, especially in cases that have become asymptomatic.
It’s not a wildly radical idea. In fact, right now local businesses can access rapid test kits for their employees, distributed through chambers of commerce across the province.
It’s part of rapid testing initiative supported by the provincial and federal governments. According to the Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce website, “the goal of the program is to protect the lives of all workers and the livelihoods of small business owners by reducing the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.”
The Chamber says it has signed an agreement with NB Public Health to be the distributor of the kits in southeast New Brunswick, and all participating businesses must also sign a document with guidelines on how the rapid tests can be used. Businesses don’t need to be a member of a chamber of commerce to qualify.
At least one local business, the Black Duck Cafe, has taken advantage. Co-owner Al Barbour says the cafe received a couple of boxes of tests distributed by the Greater Moncton Chamber, and have been using them with employees for three to four weeks now. “They take about 15 minutes,” says Barbour. “They’re not as accurate as the lab tests, obviously, but they are helpful, especially during allergy season,” he says.
Barbour says that when a cold went around a couple of weeks ago, Black Duck employees could use rapid tests to rule out COVID. “We had all negatives,” said Barbour, “but we actually have sent people after getting tested to also go get a lab test, in order to sort of make sure that everything was good.”
New Brunswick Department of Health spokesperson Bruce MacFarlane says “discussions are currently underway” on the possible use of rapid tests for K-12 schools and child-care facilities. And in fact, they are in use at one high school in the province. Macfarlane says a testing program was set up earlier this week at Southern Victoria High School in Perth Andover for students who have not been able to book a test through an assessment centre.
BETTER BOOKING SYSTEM WOULD HELP
Emily Austin says that in addition to making rapid testing available to families, she’d like to see improvements to the registration system for testing. If people could get more information about where the backlogs and wait times are greatest, she says, they could choose their quickest path to test results.
“Something has to give somewhere,” says Austin. “Because it’s so hard when you’re just sitting and you don’t know if maybe something went wrong, if you entered the wrong phone number in the system.”
UNDERSTANDING THE RULES ON KEEPING KIDS HOME
Although it’s not clear from the province’s Healthy and Safe Schools policy, Anglophone East district spokesperson Stephanie Patterson says that once symptoms have cleared, students are free to return to school, even if they are still waiting on test results.
The Healthy and Safe Schools guidelines give clear direction on staying home with two or more symptoms, and also that two symptoms require testing, but they don’t specify what happens if the testing wait times last longer than the symptoms. Patterson says students can return to school as long as they have less than 2 symptoms.
“If the student or staff member has less than 2 symptoms they are able to return to school unless they have been directed to isolate by Public Health as a close contact,” said Patterson by email Thursday.
For daycares, it’s not that simple. The amount of time kids are required to stay home depends on what symptoms that child experienced, and a call to 811 is necessary to determine if a child is free to return to daycare without a test result.
