Steps pharmacies are taking to make symptomatic COVID-19 testing as safe as they can

The shift to allowing Ontario pharmacies to begin symptomatic COVID-19 testing last week sparked a lot of debate—much of it around the safety and feasibility of indoor testing. Guidance from the provincial health ministry requires pharmacies to offer symptomatic tests in a dedicated space that has proper ventilation, to keep people who are being tested physically distanced from others, and have them enter through their own pathways and leave directly after tests. Not everyone thought these were possible. As a comment in our piece on the issue put it, “The logistics don’t seem well planned, unless pharmacies are suddenly also increasing square footage and improving ventilation with HEPA filtered separate rooms.” Read: Do I really need to be making the case for a third dose? So how are pharmacies doing this? Chancellors Way Pharmacy in Guelph is running tests inside. Its owner Peter Namis is a pharmacist who also runs PharmaCon, a company created to support asymptomatic testing that’s helping independent pharmacies implement new procedures. Chancellors Way lowers the risk by only doing symptomatic tests at the end of the day, when the pharmacy is otherwise closed. Patients fill out all their information beforehand, are let in through a side door and led to a consultation room only used for symptomatic testing. “They come in, I confirm their ID and that the information is accurate, I do the swab, and they’re out the door in less than five minutes,” says Namis, who works alone during this portion of the day. The room has a good baseline air exchange rate, because it’s part of a medical building which was designed with that in mind. It also has an additional HEPA filter, and the surfaces are cleaned between patients and at the end of the day. Read: Jury holds pharmacies responsible for role in opioid crisis Namis has tested about a dozen symptomatic patients so far. He says it doesn’t feel risky. “I’m okay with it personally just because I know how strict we are [about cleaning and isolating patients]. But he is worried that stores are rushing into this without adequate training. “I’m not okay with everybody and their dog doing COVID testing. I’m not against pharmacists doing it, as long as they can do it properly. But I've seen a lot of corners cut in asymptomatic testing already.” Many pharmacies who are doing symptomatic testing are actually doing it outside, or in patients’ cars. One vocal pharmacist running tests outside is Kyro Maseh, who runs Lawlor Pharmasave in Toronto. Patients who want symptomatic tests fill out a form on the store’s website, make an appointment time, and call when they get there. They are “strictly advised not to enter the pharmacy,” says Maseh, who dons PPE, meets them outside and takes them to a quiet corner of the building to do the test. He keeps the swabs in a separate freezer box, and drops them off at a collection site on this way home. He says it’s “not feasible” to test indoors and he has no plans to start. “There has to be a really high air exchange rate, along with HEPA filtration, and I just don’t have that in my pharmacy . . .. That’s just not going to happen here,” he says. In addition, he thinks his system of doing the tests outside is working well. “People generally are pretty happy— they show up and within three minutes are swabbed and they’re leaving.” Maseh said he has performed around a dozen symptomatic swabs, and doing it outside feels “120%” safe. He also believes increasing access is important to getting more people tested who have symptoms. “A lot of these people [I tested] indirectly conveyed to me that if I wasn’t doing it they wouldn’t drive up to the testing centre—they would have just let it be. It’s a no-brainer [to do this], and it’s made everybody’s life easier.” Read: How B.C. pharmacists handled drug rationing and helped those trapped, evacuated due to mudslides

Steps pharmacies are taking to make symptomatic COVID-19 testing as safe as they can

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics