While Orillia’s COVID-19 assessment centre opened its doors at its new location at Rotary Place today, officials behind the move are hoping people who require a COVID-19 test will get onboard with their new appointment-only model.
On Friday, the provincial government announced that assessment centres would only be open for appointments, discontinuing walk-in testing services.
On Monday, Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital (OSMH) and the City of Orillia announced they would be moving the Couchiching COVID-19 Assessment Centre from the OSMH property into the city-owned arena on University Avenue.
“We are changing location and moving to appointment-only testing all at the same time,” said Terri Dyni, director of community relations with OSMH. “These are a lot of changes that will better prepare us for testing going into the winter months.”
At the end of September, the centre had seen major increases in the number of people coming in for testing.
Dr. Kim McIntosh, medical director at the Couchiching COVID-19 Assessment Centre, sent a letter to the public at that time outlining the changes they had seen in the last week of September alone.
“We noticed the numbers of individuals requesting testing doubled from our usual volumes by the end of last week and then actually tripled from our usual volumes over the course of this week,” McIntosh noted.
With online booking of appointments available starting today, Dyni said they are expecting to maintain the same testing capacities, of between 330 to 350 tests completed and sent to the lab per day.
Lab results are currently taking about five days to be returned.
“The provincial labs are facing capacity challenges that dictate turnaround times,” said Dyni.
Overall, Dyni said the next challenge will be education.
“We will need to educate our community to use the online access to book their appointments. We have tried to make the process as simple as possible,” he said.
The new assessment centre is open for appointments from Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
For more information or to book an appointment for a COVID-19 test, click here.