The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre hopes to get the lab materials required to test coronavirus swab samples on site for a shorter turnaround time on obtaining the results.

According to Dr. Stewart Kennedy, the Thunder Bay hospital’s COVID-19 manager, if they succeed in securing test kits and the other items required, they would “absolutely” accept samples from Kenora and other COVID-19 community assessment centres from across Northwestern Ontario.

Currently, the Thunder Bay hospital provides COVID-19 screening for individuals with symptoms at its assessment centre. Kennedy said the hospital has the apparatus to perform in-house lab testing; a point-of-care testing system and a new BioFire system.

Both systems require test kits and reagents, which the hospital is trying to obtain in greater quantities.

“That’s what we’re struggling for right now,” Kennedy said. “If we had the test kits, we could do just over 360 [tests] a day, with three to four hours of turnaround.”

He said that if the hospital gets the test kits and reagents needed to perform in-house testing, and if they were the only hospital in Northwestern Ontario to provide in-house testing, they would “absolutely” test samples that come from the Northwestern Health Unit to guarantee a faster turnaround time for all tests conducted in the region.

“We’re a service to the region,” Kennedy said. “We want to help out the total region, not just the residents of Thunder Bay.

Currently, the hospital, like all hospitals in the province, sends their samples to the provincial public health lab in Toronto for testing. Kennedy said the turnaround time for the return of results is two to three days, an improvement from five to nine days two weeks ago.

“That still is two to three days too long,” Kennedy said. “We’re putting our health-care workers, we’re putting our patients at risk (without a) more… timely response to our results.”

Kennedy said the provincial government is well aware that test turnaround times could be shortened and that the hospital is “confident” that they’ll make some progress.

He said that those in the province leading the pandemic response don’t always understand the distance of Northwestern Ontario from testing sites in Toronto and that can be “frustrating at times.”

“Through these pandemics there’s always a learning process,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think they’re ignoring us. I think they’re dealing with supply issues as the priority, so what I’m trying to do is make this a higher priority.”

Kennedy said he expects the Thunder Bay assessment centre will begin to process many more tests than before, as the eligibility criteria has changed. A few weeks ago, it was primarily individuals who were returning travels outside the country that were being tested. As of last week, anyone with flu-like symptoms is eligible for a swab test.