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“I heard that if you have asthma you could be at further risk,” he said.

The criteria for testing was much more specific, according to public health officials. Anyone who didn’t have a cough or fever, and who had not recently travelled out of the country or been in contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 were turned away.

Saturday’s trend continued one established on Friday when the centre first opened to the public. Ottawa Hospital officials on site said less than half of the 311 people who showed up for assessment on Friday needed to be swabbed.

The assessment centre was set up to ease the burden on local emergency rooms.

Some have showed up to the assessment centre simply because they said they couldn’t get through to public health any other way.

The volume of calls to Ottawa’s COVID-19 help line have been doubling by the day, according to Ottawa medical officer Vera Etches, and non-nursing staff have had to be called in to help.

Initially the line was getting about 200 calls per day, but by Thursday it was up to 1,600, Etches said, making the drop-in assessment centre the first point of contact for some people concerned about the virus.

“I have been the sickest I’ve been in years, likely just the flu, but had travelled back from the states and have had a fever,” said 34 year-old Sarah Macindoe outside of the facility Saturday.

She had been trying to get through to public health and telehealth for days, but wasn’t able to reach anyone and doesn’t have a family doctor. She finally felt well enough to get out of bed and venture to the arena to be assessed, and was promptly set home without being tested.