Maybe the rain is getting to you and you’re dreaming of a beach vacation. Perhaps you haven’t been able to visit family since the pandemic began. Whatever the reason, some Canadians are anxious to start travelling again.
And with several provinces easing COVID-19 restrictions, there are growing calls for Ottawa to scrap mandatory testing requirements for Canadian travelers. Some of that advice is coming from doctors. “What are we trying to prevent with testing? Are we trying to prevent Omicron cases from coming into Canada? Well, there’s a lot of Omicron that’s already in Canada,” said Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases doctor and associate professor at McMaster University.
He also pointed out the widespread transmission of COVID-19 in Canada leads to another potential problem for would-be travelers. Chagla said in provinces like B.C. and Ontario, where access to COVID-19 testing is extremely limited, many who have become sick at home have no way to document their infection. That means they can’t get an exemption to travel testing requirements, but do face the risk of testing positive even after they are no longer infected.
“We know that PCRs can remain positive for some individuals for three to six months,” the doctor said. “They have to treat themselves as infectious, they have to cancel their flights, they have to isolate in a foreign country,” he said. Chagla says border testing is also believed to be costing the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars.
“If we’re not preventing much from coming in and we’re just causing harms to people, the purpose for this type of testing is really in question,” he said.
When CTV News asked federal officials when health measures might be rolled-back, the Public Health Agency of Canada responded in an email saying the federal government “continuously assesses the latest available evidence and monitor the situation to determine when to ease or adjust border measures accordingly.”
Source:bc.ctvnews.ca
