By: Mike Anderson

Walk-in testing is no longer being offered at Southlake’s COVID-19 Assessment Centre, as the hospital began taking appointments for COVID-19 tests on October 3.

Those appointments will start on Tuesday, October 6, according to a media release issued by Southlake Regional Health Centre over the weekend.

“Southlake’s Assessment Centre will be closed Monday, October 5 to move to this new system which will help alleviate the line ups as the weather gets colder,” said Matt Haggerty, a hospital spokesperson.

“Those who have already scheduled appointments related to procedures or surgery will remain the same. Those tests will be conducted as scheduled.”

This move follows the province’s announcement on Friday, October 2, that walk-in testing would be discontinued as cold-weather would make line ups problematic and the testing backlog recently spiked over 90,000 tests.

The province will also increase testing and processing capacity to 50,000 tests per day later this month and 68,000 tests per day by mid-November.

And it will introduce new testing methods once they are approved by Health Canada. So far, more than 4 million tests have been completed in Ontario.

According to Southlake’s website, the hospital’s Assessment Centre will only test patients for COVID-19 who:

• have symptoms of COVID-19
• were alerted to a potential exposure by the COVID-19 app or by Public Health
• were in contact with someone who has COVID-19
• were involved in a COVID-19 outbreak
• are in an at-risk group as defined by provincial health officials

For more information, please visit: www.southlake.ca

Mike Anderson
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