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Quebec is ramping up its COVID-19 testing to be able to process as many as 12,000 a day with the expectation that the novel coronavirus will soon spread into the community, the director of the testing program told the Montreal Gazette on Wednesday.

The Laboratoire de santé publique du Québec (LSPQ) is also farming out testing to hospitals to speed up processing, confirmed Dr. Michel Roger, who has been working seven days a week in the midst of the pandemic. Ste-Justine, the Jewish General, the Centre hospitalier de l’université de Montréal and the McGill University Health Centre now have the ability to test their own patients.

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Still, the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue lab is receiving so many tests that it can’t keep up, resulting in delays of up to 48 hours in obtaining results. The lab has the capacity to conduct 800 tests a day, but is receiving requests for nearly 2,000 daily.

As a result, the provincial lab technicians have stopped other activities to concentrate on COVID-19 testing exclusively. They’re also giving priority to processing the tests of people who already have respiratory symptoms — either those who have returned from travels abroad or those who have come into contact with those who have travelled.