By Ethan Ready

Virtual Townhall

Northern Health holds Virtual Townhall to answer Northerners questions on COVID-19

Apr 22, 2020 | 9:15 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Wednesday evening, the Government of British Columbia put on its fourth Regional Townhall, to answer COVID-19 questions virtually.

Stikine MLA Doug Donaldson, Peace River South MLA Mike Bernier, Cathy Ulrich, Northern Health’s CEO, and Dr. Raina Fumerton, Acting Chief MHO were those participating and responding to the questions put forth by residents from across the region.

The four covered a variety of questions surrounding testing, turnaround times, and even the North’s take on social distancing (one moose length).

The first question posed was with regards to testing strategies by Northern Health.

Dr. Fumerton stated that the testing strategy has had to change over time due to the circumstances changing.

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“At this point in time, I’m really pleased to say we have the capacity to broaden our testing strategy.”

She said that wasn’t the case initially as they had to be focused on who was able to be tested.

“Any British Columbian experiencing cold, flu, or COVID-like symptoms can be accessed to receive a COVID test from a practitioner.”

Fumerton, who answered the majority of the questions during the live stream, added that health professionals may still recommend that certain patients are best managed at home and do not need to be tested.

“There’s clinical judgement in all of this,” said Fumerton.

Another topic that was cleared up was the length in time that it takes for test results to come back in Northern Health, with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control Dashboard on COVID-19 indicating that the average test turnaround time for Northern Health is between 40-80 hours while the rest of the province is around 20 hours.

“We have dropped the time significantly. At the beginning, it was a much longer turnaround time. That now is down to about 20 hours turnaround time. That is partly because there has been increased capacity developed in the labs across the province,” stated Northern Health’s CEO Cathy Ulrich.

One contributing factor to the long turnaround times has been the transportation of the test specimen to those labs, which have been located in the Lower Mainland.

“We now have air transport out of Fort St. John, Terrace, and Prince George,” she added, which has helped expedite the turnaround time for test results.

She did indicate that due to those transportation times, despite the increase in capacity of labs, test results will take longer for the North regardless.

“In addition, we are working to add some capacity in the North. UHNBC started to be able to process specimens this week. We are looking to put similar capacity in place in Fort St. John and Terrace.

A topic that has been a reoccurring question from those in the North was focused on why the Northern Health region, due to its size, isn’t having its positive results narrowed down further to specific areas of the region.

Fumerton stated that she agrees with the province’s stance on only communicating specific areas when outbreaks occur, further adding that there is no outbreak in the North.

“I think it’s important that no matter where the cases are, we are all assuming we have cases within our community. The cases we know about are one thing, there’s also that we don’t know what we don’t know. We only know about lab-confirmed cases, and we need to assume there are cases circulating in all of our communities. As such, we have to be following the public health orders and guidelines that have been outlined by Dr. Bonnie Henry.

The full Virtual Townhall can be viewed here.

Anyone who has additional questions can contact the Northern Health Online COVID-19 Information Line at 1-844-645-7811.