Canada's abandoning of COVID-19 testing leaves us vulnerable to future variants, expert says

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Canada is entering a period of relative calm as the Omicron-driven fifth wave subsides across much of the country. But our ability to track new and existing variants is in jeopardy with testing access still heavily restricted — leaving us vulnerable to pandemic whiplash.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, said Friday that COVID-19 levels have continued to decline in most of Canada, with weekly case counts down 26 per cent and hospitalizations and ICU admissions down 20 per cent compared to the previous week. 

"Nevertheless, as the virus is still circulating widely, some jurisdictions are reporting weekly increases in case counts and others could see additional bumps in the weeks ahead," she said.

"At the same time, there is a continued high volume of PCR testing being performed and ongoing genetic sequencing of circulating virus variants." 

But the level of COVID-19 testing in Canada has actually dropped off dramatically since the start of the Omicron wave — with more than 100,000 daily tests being performed in early December, about 150,000 in early January, down to just over 50,000 as of Friday. 

That makes it nearly impossible to get a clear sense of what the true number of COVID-19 cases are in Canada, and severely limits the number of testing samples that can undergo genomic sequencing to detect for the presence of variants.

The World Health Organization's leading coronavirus expert Maria Van Kerkhove said this week that while there has been a 20 per cent drop in COVID-19 levels globally in the past week compared to the previous week, the decline "may not be real" due to a lack of testing.

"We are very concerned about a reduction in testing around the world," she said Tuesday.

"We need to be smart about this, we need to be strategic about this, but we cannot abandon it — and what we do not want to see is the dismantling of these surveillance systems that have been put in place for COVID-19." 

Van Kerkhove said widespread COVID-19 testing is "absolutely critical" to detecting new variants and understanding how the virus is evolving, because you can't sequence testing samples for the presence of variants if people aren't actually being tested.

She added the virus will evolve over time because the more it circulates, the more opportunities it has to change — but while more variants can emerge with "concerning" properties, they won't become a public health threat unless they spread.

"About the only thing I am certain about is that there will be a new variant," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) at the University of Saskatchewan. 

"With three billion worldwide unvaccinated, coupled with relaxed precautions intended to reduce transmission, I feel pretty confident saying that the next variant is not a question of if, but when."