Ontario Premier Doug Ford has unveiled his government's plan to increase daily COVID-19 testing, two days of saying current levels were "unacceptable."
The new staggered approach will see current levels double to 8,000 tests a day by next Wednesday, 14,000 by April 29th and 16,000 by May 6th.
Despite a current capacity to do 13,000 and Ford's stern comments earlier this week, he's happy to see a doubling of current levels by next week.
"We're ramping it up, we're going out there, we're doubling the testing in a very short period, you're going to see the numbers jump and if we can do it sooner, we're going to do it sooner," he said Friday. "We're going right across a vast province and making sure we test as many people as possible."
The previous goal had been 19,000 by the third week of April.
Senior health officials told reporters earlier in the day said the province lacked the lab capacity to deal with the initial influx of tests, leading to a backlog of thousands.
They also said it depends on the current supply chains and there's currently 200,000 swab tests available.
Now that more self-assessment centres and labs have opened, the backlog has been chipped away and they can increase testing to priority groups.
Those include:
There's also plans to expand to future groups such as cancer patients, pregnant women, newborns, frequent travelers and non-health care essential workers, some of which senior officials told reporters was already happening.
The province however is not testing everyone in all long-term care homes such as in Quebec and health minister Christine Elliott said they're concentrating testing on areas where outbreaks have already occurred.
"There are 99 long-term care homes in Ontario that have or have had a person with COVID-19 so we are concentrating the resources there, we are doing extensive testing there," she said.
There's also new symptoms being added for testing such as hoarse voice, difficulty swallowing and nausea, while for seniors, it's chills, delirium, acute functional decline, increase heart rate and blood pressure change.
There was however confusion over whether other individuals could be tested even with symptoms.
Earlier in the day when senior health officials briefed reporters, they said unless they fell into the priority groups, those experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, but who were otherwise healthy would not be given a test, adding more widespread testing at this point would be of little use.
But Elliott later said that those exhibiting signs and symptoms could get tested.
"If people are exhibiting signs of COVID-19 even in the expanded listing that we provided today and the physician feels if they show up in the emergency department or at an assessment centre or speak to their family doctor about it and then go to the assessment centre, they will be tested," she said.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said that doctors have ultimate discretion.
"They will assess whether the testing in their mind is necessary at that time, will it affect the course of care and management at that time?" he said.
The government is also exploring blood tests, which officials said measure antibodies and the not the virus itself, as well as other sorts of tests which could be converted.