As COVID-19 testing lines grow, Manitoba expected to roll out rapid testing strategy soon
CBC
All Ellis Okemow wants for Christmas is to be reunited with his only daughter back home in Gods Lake Narrows First Nation.
Okemow and his partner, Delia Ross, came to Winnipeg from their northeastern Manitoba community to finish up Christmas shopping.
Instead, they ended up visiting four different Winnipeg COVID-19 testing sites in less than 24 hours.
They're now in danger of missing their flight home Friday because of a surge in demand for COVID-19 tests and lengthy wait times for results.
"It's crazy," Okemow said after about 45 minutes of waiting in line at the Main Street drive-thru testing location Wednesday. "We've only moved about three to four blocks."
The couple later said they ended up waiting for five hours for a test, which is required to fly with Perimeter Aviation to communities like Gods Lake Narrows.
The lengthy waits at sites prompted the Winnipeg Police Service to issue a traffic advisory to motorists around the King Edward Street COVID-19 testing site Wednesday.
With high demand for COVID-19 testing as cases stemming from the Omicron virus variant spread rapidly, and more people in need of negative test results to travel during the holiday season, Ross wonders why the province isn't doing more to help make rapid testing available.
"They'd make it easier and faster. Look at all the lineups," she said.
Late Tuesday evening, the couple popped by the King Edward Street testing site but were told they would not get a test before it closed.
"The line was so crazy they had to shut the gate because it was already full," Ross said.
Early Wednesday morning, they went to a walk-in COVID testing site on Garry Street, and then to another on King Street.
Denied twice more.
After finally making it through the line and receiving their COVID tests, Okemow and Ross contacted CBC News to say they were told it could take up to three or four days to get their results.
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.