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It is a bit of a target in evolution

“We are at the moment working out some of the optimal lab testing strategy going forward,” she said. “It is a bit of a target in evolution, but as a first tranche, roughly close to 60,000 is where the provinces can potentially expand to as a target already.”

One piece of the strategy is rolling out “point-of-care” devices that can process tests on site, rather than needing to be sent away to labs. Tam said Canada is acquiring these devices from Ottawa-based Spartan Bioscience, but is also looking at international options to supplement it. “Those are expected to be distributed across the country, but targeted at the more rural areas where they can’t access the labs right now,” she said.

Another piece will be serological testing, where a person’s blood is tested for antibodies that shows they’ve already had the virus and should be immune.

“Our lab is working really hard at validating the serologic tests that are being presented,” she said. “I think internationally we’re aware that some of them actually don’t work, so we want to make sure that the ones that we have actually are effective and can detect the antibody response in the Canadian population.”

Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/File

For now, the biggest issue for provincial officials is to make sure they’re truly past the peak of infections and hospitalizations.

“We want to make sure that you’re at the bottom of that epidemic curve,” Tam said. “I’ve always said that there’s a different kind of epidemic going on across the country, so the timing of some of the (distancing) measures … there may be some variations in that. But we wanted to get a national approach in some of the public health criteria, so that’s what we’re working on.”