New initiative speeds up COVID-19 test result notifications

By Victoria Revay and Faiza Amin

A new initiative at William Osler Health System is helping speed-up COVID-19 test result notifications in Toronto and Peel Region.

Dr. Brooks Fallis, the medical director of the program, says this new follow-up strategy will ensure that people testing positive for the disease can self-isolate and maximize their distancing from other people sooner.

With Premier Doug Ford’s recent call for Ontarians to get tested regardless of their symptoms, Fallis says this initiative is now more important in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“It has to be extremely rapid,” he says. “Because if somebody is infectious pre-symptomatically, then they become symptomatic, then their symptoms become enough that they decide to go to an assessment center and get tested. Now they may be multiple days into that period of time where they can spread COVID.”

Under the guidance of Ontario Public Health, a team of 60 volunteers made up of medical and pharmacy students from three Canadian universities – University of Toronto, Ottawa U, and McMaster – help flag all of the tests and then follow-up over the phone with those who have tested positive for coronavirus.

Kathy Huang, a first-year medical student at McMaster University, is part of the program and jumped at the chance early on to be involved.

“This is such a great learning experience for us early on in our education,” she says. “And this pandemic sort of offers a once in a lifetime-type of opportunity to learn and to really understand what it means to step-up.”

Volunteers make between 40 to 60 calls a week, prioritizing patients with positive test results following a script that has been provided to them along with other resources. On Wednesday alone, William Osler’s assessment centers and emergency departments completed over 1,100 tests, typically getting results back within 20 to 26 hours. This is helping streamline public health services in both Toronto and Peel, home of the majority of COVID-19 cases.

“A lot of the patients in the community have a much milder or different symptom profile,” says Fallis. “In addition, we know now that people can pass the virus on to someone else in the pre-symptomatic phase, and some people are even asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic. This is the crux of why it’s so hard to clamp down on COVID-19 in our communities.”

With the province pushing to ramp up testing in the community, the health center is also thinking of expanding their resources, adding that this is something civil servants, teachers and educators of all levels and librarians can also help with.

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