Quebec’s COVID-19 infection rate has gone up in the past few days, reaching the levels record in the spring. Unfortunately, for some unexplained reasons, testing has not kept up.
There were hours-long queues last Tuesday as more people went to get tested. Young families got stuck in queues with children after they were notified of cases in schools.
Across the city, right from the easter tip of Montreal all the way to Lachine and to the West Island, including the area below Highway 40, only 5 centres allow people to walk in and get tested.
Of these, Douglas Hospital, Verdun, and Jewish General Hospital operate 24 hours, while Parc-Ex CLSC works five afternoon each week.
Hotel-Dieu is open to walk-ins a few hours each week. Clinique Chauveau in east Biodome also provides walk-in testing.
At the start of the year, Montrealers had more options, although it is not longer possible to confirm what sites were available to them then.
In general, there has been a reduction in testing centres in Montreal, even though the Centre-Sud recently opened up three other centres, all in the Verdun area.
The issue is that many of the sites offer appointment-based testing, which wasn’t the case last spring. People have a preference for walk-in sites.
Immunization centres are asking people to set up appointments because conditions evolve with the state of the pandemic, this is according to Jean Nicolas Aube, the Centre-Sud’s spokesperson.
