Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore spoke remotely as he announced that beginning tomorrow publicly funded PCR testing for Covid-19 will only be available for vulnerable populations, hospitals, long term care, retirement and congregate setting employee and residents.
The need to get a PCR test after testing positive on an Antigen test has also been removed except for the previously prioritized populations.
The reasoning was to preserve the testing capacity for those that need it the most.
Antigen tests provided by the Province will also be only distributed to the same prioritized population. Everyone else is to assume they have Covid-19 should symptoms develop. The isolation time will be assumed as 5 days following the onset of symptoms. This also includes everyone in the same household as the person displaying Covid-19 symptoms.
Close contacts who have someone test positive near them do not have to isolate if they do not reside with the person testing positive. They are just to watch their symptoms and act accordingly if their own symptoms develop. This is for fully vaccinated people only.
Those people unvaccinated or partially vaccinated must continue to isolate for 10 days as previously.
Case and contact management will now no longer be done by the Health Unit unless it’s a vulnerable population. Everyone else will be responsible to handle notifying their close contacts should they test positive.
Vaccine Eligibility will be expanded immediately to offer a fourth dose should it be 3 months since their last dose for vulnerable populations including retirement, long term care and congregate settings.
Students will be returning to in-class instruction on Wednesday, January 5th to give extra time for deploying extra health measures to school environments.