There’s growing evidence that Canada is open to changing its on-arrival testing program for international air travellers.
A prominent tourism and business group yesterday called for on-arrival tests to be scrapped, arguing they’re not necessary and that tests should be redeployed to help make up for test shortages in Canadian communities.
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, said later in the day that the policy will be evaluated “over time.”
“It is a capacity drain on the system as a whole,” she said, acknowledging the concerns raised by the Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable group.
“Tracking every case isn’t really necessary for a surveillance perspective,” Tam said at a news conference in Ottawa. “When the whole world has Omicron, our next-door neighbour has Omicron, for the most part, you’re right in that we could do sampling for the tests instead of testing maybe every single vaccinated individual.”
“On-arrival COVID-19 PCR tests waste valuable, scarce testing resources that could be redeployed to protect our frontline workers and support a return to school for children,” the Roundtable said in its release.
Canada in November began testing international travellers coming into the country, except those from the U.S. Those tests are in addition to the requirement that all travellers, including Canadians, must provide a negative result from a PCR test taken within 72 hours of their scheduled departure.
That means that someone who’s already tested negative would have to be tested again on arrival, except those coming from the U.S.
A top Canadian doctor earlier this week said Canada doesn’t need to require on-arrival PCR tests for travellers.
“What’s really clear is that COVID is everywhere and that it’s not travel that’s the major source of spread,” said Dr. David Carr, an emergency medicine professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto, told the CBC.
“Making people repeat their PCR [test] upon arrival is deflecting resources away from where they could be better spent,” he said.
Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases physician at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, made a similar point this week.
In a Canadian Press report in the Saturday Globe and Mail, Chagla is quoted as saying that border testing for vaccinated people without symptoms “is pouring water on the dry grass when the house behind you is on fire.
“Canada needs to drop travel testing, and focus on local testing. Period.”
The Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC) says PCR tests for people coming into the country aren’t necessary.
“As we watch the loosening of other requirements, such as isolation periods, it would seem that loosening of requirements around travel should follow suit,” Beth Potter, president and CEO of TIAC, told The Globe and Mail recently. “We would love to get to the point where you only need to do a rapid test on arrival, then carry on.”
