Mississauga, Brampton and Ontario stores to give out COVID-19 rapid tests

The Ford government will soon start distributing free COVID-19 rapid tests through grocery stores and pharmacies in Mississauga, Brampton and all of Ontario.

Multiple reports at Toronto media portals on Tuesday (Feb. 8) stated that province will distribute free rapid tests through grocery stores and pharmacies. Tests have been hard to get ahold of during the fifth wave of the pandemic, which has been fuelled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The news comes exactly two months to the day that Ontario Premier Doug Ford ruled out expanding access to COVID-19 testing outside of the more vulnerable sectors of the province. At that time, Ontario was in the early days of the Omicron surge. On Dec. 8, the premier said that dedicated rapid tests almost exclusively to test healthcare workers, residents and staff in congregate care settings, unvaccinated teachers and employees of essential businesses was part of “the strongest pandemic plan in the country, bar none.” Ford added that the province was “handing out a million (tests) a week, those are staggering numbers.”

The reports on Wednesday, which cited unnamed sources, state that about 5.5 million tests per week will be distributed through grocery stores and pharmacies. That would be a more than five-fold increase over the volume of test distribution two months ago.

Just before Christmas, free five-packs of rapid tests were made available through LCBO stores. In many cities, residents lined up outside the doors, only to learn none were yet available.

Last month, the government cited a supply crunch as a reason for not making tests more widely available. In January, Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said “testing is luxury.”

When in-person learning resumed in Ontario schools three weeks ago, the province said it was providing two rapid antigen tests (RATs) to each students. Many school boards made social media posts showing their employees spending hours taking apart the five-packs of RATs and re-sorting them into pairs to ensure there would be enough to go around.

Case numbers, hospitalizations, intensive-care unit admissions and COVID-19-associated deaths rose in December and January. There has been some levelling off of late.
However, there were 2,254 hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 on Tuesday, which was a 4.6-per-cent increase from the previous day. That said, the tally is 46 per cent lower than the all-time peak of 4,183, which was set on Jan. 18.

Four hundred and seventy-four patients are in ICU with COVID, which is 12 fewer than reported on Monday.

The reported positivity rate is 14.2 per cent.

Also, per ontario.substack.com, there were 1,402 COVID-19 cases in fully vaccinated people in Ontario. That is one for every 8,443 people who have had at least two jabs.

There were 690 cases in people who are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or whose vax status is unknown. That works out to a rate of one in 4,321 people.

Each dose that the average person receives reduces their chance of suffering severe health outcomes or death as a result of having COVID-19.