Mobile testing clinics in the hot spots
Mobile testing clinics are coming to the following neighbourhoods, that I’ve been able to find data on: Lasalle, St-Laurent, Little Burgundy, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, and areas in the east end of the city. There’s also a testing clinic in Montreal North that’s already been closed and reopened once.
CBC lists other non-mobile testing clinics.
But the phrasing is still: “if they have COVID-19 symptoms or have been in contact with someone who has the disease.” We already know it’s easy to have this virus and not know it for days, so we all need to assume we’ve been in contact with someone who has it, and that every time we go outside to do any errand – or even to walk around – we could touch something or breathe the air from someone infected. Even if most of the deaths have been in old-age homes, that doesn’t mean the virus is contained: the only reason we’re not seeing more widespread illness is because of the lockdown.
It’s like the flu shot. You’re not supposed to get one for free unless you’re in certain health categories or in contact with someone who is. But the minute you go into a store or board a bus – back in the old days of crowded stores and buses – you’re in contact with people of all ages and levels of health. A nurse told me this at the CLSC when I was getting the shot a couple of years ago. “We all are, ma chère” she said, and stuck a needle in my arm.
denpanosekai 09:48 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Verdun had one Monday-Tuesday
walkerp 10:58 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
I hate the lack of honesty around testing criteria. Just tell us we don’t have enough testing and so we have to limit. They keep making arbitrary criteria such as having symptoms, which make no sense in several contexts and everybody knows it. This undermines confidence.
Chris 11:09 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
walkerp, where has any official said there are enough testing kits to test everyone?
>It’s like the flu shot. You’re not supposed to get one for free unless you’re in certain health categories…
Money is not unlimited. Flu shots cost money. Every government dollar spent on flu shots is a dollar not spent on surgeries, equipment upgrades, building new hospitals, buying more ambulances, hiring more nurses, etc. There is modelling on risk/reward on how to most efficiently spend healthcare money. Having x additional people sick for a few days with flu is perhaps a good tradeoff for reducing surgery times by x months.
Kate 11:14 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Chris, you’re not an epidemiologist, and I bet you’ve never even played one on TV. Flu shots also mean not giving over hospital beds to people with pneumonia. Influenza does kill people. Here’s a pile of stats from Canada up till COVID-19 overtook flu as news (although the recurring mention of an “influenza-like illness” is interesting).
Tee Owe 12:00 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Jumping in here a bit short of data but anyway – flu shots are attempted vaccines, based on best guesses on which influenza will come along this year. Kate is right flu kills many people. Preventing flu-related problems would save lots more than it costs. Influenza mutates a lot so we don’t always get it right. Corona? We don’t know yet – a vaccine would be great but we have to wait and see.
Tee Owe 12:05 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Have to add, modeling Covid-19’on flu turned out to be a mistake – it doesn’t play by flu-rules. Testing allows isolation of positives which allows the rest of us to get on with our lives – test test test!
jeather 12:10 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Having x additional people sick for a few days with flu is perhaps a good tradeoff for reducing surgery times by x months.
Perhaps! Who can know if flu shots, like other preventative care, is worth it! It is a shame there are absolutely no studies on the cost-effectiveness of flu vaccines, so all we can do is wonder.
Chris 13:27 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
jeather, “perhaps” indeed; measuring all these tradeoffs is a full time job, and I make no claim to have done so. I’m sure such studies have been done.
Kate, yes, your point about beds is indeed part of the tradeoffs. My point is that rationing free flu vaccines to certain people is not necessarily the wrong choice.
Kate 13:38 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Chris, somehow Ontario manages to do free flu vaccines every year. I don’t know how their budgeting works, but they do.
Tee Owe 13:49 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Regarding cost-effectiveness of flu vaccines, I browsed for exactly that and got this – it seems a useful link (they are cost-effective, even f they don’t always hit their target exactly ). Maybe worth mentioning that hand-washing and social distancing also work well against the flu –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine
Chris 13:57 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Kate, yes, I know. OTOH, Quebec “manages” to have a public prescription drug plan, Ontario doesn’t. People die if they can’t afford their needed drugs. Does that save more lives than die of flu? Tradeoffs. I’m not saying Quebec is making the right ones, I’m saying these tradeoffs exist, and that one shouldn’t assume they haven’t been thought through.
Tee, indeed flu is way down since the covid lockdown.
walkerp 14:58 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
@Chris, every time somebody tries to get a test and is refused. How many stories do we have to hear about a frontline worker who can’t get a test because “they don’t have symptoms”? How about just say, we are really fucking short on tests, so we have to triage them as best we can.
The bigger issue, of course, is their mistaken criteria in the first place.