Ontario's top health official to make announcement about rapid testing in schools

Dr Kieran Moore, the Chief Medical Officer of Health of Ontario, attends an announcement at the Ontario Legislature on Tuesday September 14, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

TORONTO -

Ontario’s top public health official will make an announcement Tuesday morning regarding rapid testing in schools in areas where there are high incidence rates of COVID-19, CTV News Toronto has learned.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore is scheduled to make the announcement from the Queen’s Park media studio at 8:45 a.m.

It comes as the Ford government faces criticism from parents over its refusal to make rapid tests more widely available in schools.

In recent weeks parents at a number of schools across Toronto have set up their own rapid antigen screening systems for students after growing frustrated with the availability of surveillance testing during the Delta-driven fourth wave of the pandemic.

But CP24 learned last week that the Ford government ordered several agencies to stop supplying the rapid tests to parents and to only give them to businesses.

That has left parents with no avenues to access rapid tests, which are provided by the federal government but administered by the province.

Speaking with CP24 Monday night, the head of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table said that there is a place for rapid testing in schools, but that it would not currently make sense to roll out rapid tests to every school in the province.

“Absolutely no,” Dr. Peter Juni said to the idea of rapid tests at every school. “Right now, no. This would be a really low-value setup for testing. You don't want that.”

Juni said he has not seen the details of the announcement planned for Tuesday, but he has had regular conversations with Moore on the topic. He said Ontario is doing well in terms of its overall case numbers and that that is the most important way to keep schools safe. He added that rapid tests should play more of a role if case numbers rise in the community.

“Right now, our first level of defence works really well,” Juni said. “There may be a moment coming when case numbers rise, where we see that we struggle in hotspots. That's where you want to pull the lever of rapid testing, so that you can immediately identify those kids who may infect others and have them basically just isolate until you get their definite PCR tests.”

Moore has repeatedly insisted that schools are safe and that transmission in the classroom has been “minimal.”

However, the Ministry of Education is still reporting in excess of 100 new school-related cases each day and schools now account for roughly a third of all active cases in the province.

While more details are expected Tuesday about plans for rapid testing in schools, Moore did say last week that the province was developing a plan to deploy rapid tests to schools after an outbreak is declared.

News of the announcement also comes as Quebec expands its school rapid testing program across the entire province.

"Quebec will start integrating #COVID19 rapid testing to create safer schools. Good move. There are several approaches to rapid test. Almost every approach is better than not testing," infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said in a message posted to Twitter.

There are currently 816 Ontario schools with at least one case of COVID-19 and five have been shuttered due to outbreaks.

There are also hundreds of cohorts that have been switched to remote learning at Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area schools due to positive cases in the classroom.

The announcement will be streamed live on CTVNewsToronto.ca and the CTV News app.