Homeless shelters at grips with outbreaks
Twenty-seven homeless shelters in Montreal are coping with Covid outbreaks.
Unions have forced Quebec to back down on shortening isolation requirements for daycare centres.
UQÀM has pushed its date for physical return to classes to January 24. Education minister J-F Roberge will give a presser Wednesday at 1 pm about return to classes generally.
Four more Canadiens players are now under Covid protocol.
Ottawa is said to be about to send a lot of rapid test kits to Quebec which is good because PCR tests are no longer generally available.
Update: UdeM is going UQÀM one better, and making its physical return date January 31. But it’s all whistling in the dark, waiting to see how numbers go between now and mid-month.
Second update: CTV has information about plans by McGill and Concordia.
MarcG 20:52 on 2022-01-04 Permalink
I could easily look this up but I’ll ask for fun: Does “Covid protocol” mean “Has covid”?
j2 21:39 on 2022-01-04 Permalink
Note also:
> On Tuesday, the Quebec also announced new isolation rules for the general population, which allow children under the age of 12 who test positive for COVID-19 to isolate for only five days.
There’s additional details in there. As a note, having had a positive rapid and PCR test, it’s six days later and my rapid test was still positive. (Quarantine-extending-symptoms supposedly don’t include coughing and loss of smell but other symptoms, eg my fatigue continues. Never had a fever or very slight if any).
Source material: https://www.msss.gouv.qc.ca/ministere/salle-de-presse/communique-3371/
Kate 23:05 on 2022-01-04 Permalink
MarcG: yes, but they have a document.
Kevin 10:22 on 2022-01-05 Permalink
Cancelling testing is a giant sign that the province no longer has enough medical workers.
Joey 10:49 on 2022-01-05 Permalink
@Kevin from what’s been reported, the issue seems to be with the testing material – accoridng to La Presse today, the province is set up for 30K tests per day. We’ve been well above 50K per day for a while now, and I suspect that the stocks of testing agents and whatnot are running dry (and, naturally, there’s a global shortage). Not to say that there isn’t also a simultaneous staff shortage in our hospitals, etc., but that doesn’t seem to be the primary driver here.
mare 15:37 on 2022-01-05 Permalink
I read somewhere that labs do batch processing: they mix 5 samples and test them all at the same time. Only when the result is positive they test each of the samples again to determine which one was actually positive. With the current high positivity rate that doesn’t make sense anymore, so every sample is processed separately, thus significantly lowering the testing capacity.
Kevin 21:45 on 2022-01-05 Permalink
Joey
I have been told that the testers are being reassigned to other tasks, like giving boosters.