What this doctor has to say about the difficulty finding COVID-19 rapid tests in Windsor-Essex

With access to COVID-19 rapid tests becoming increasingly difficult in Windsor, a former director of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table is advising people to do all they can to avoid contracting or spreading the virus.

Dr. Fahad Razak, who grew up in Windsor, said people should treat testing and getting COVID-19 vaccines as part of their regular routine.

"Responding to illness like this is about being pragmatic … so if you can avoid getting other people sick, if you can test and avoid getting high risk individuals exposed, if you can keep your kids home, if you can do things to prevent spread, that's a good thing," Razak said on Windsor Morning.

"I think as a physician, what's been reinforced to me over my career, and it's not just for COVID, it's that preventing infections where possible is a good thing because they inherently are unpredictable."

A spokesperson for Health Canada previously told CBC that it is no longer procuring rapid tests en masse. The agency also says there are no plans to replenish the federal inventory after it is depleted, but that provinces are able to request test kits until they expire or the stockpile runs out.

The Windsor-Essex Health Unit says free rapid antigen test kits will not be restocked in the future.

CBC News called a handful of pharmacies in Windsor and found none of them had test kits for sale or knew where we could find them.

Razak said he's "surprised" to learn that rapid antigen tests are seemingly impossible to find in Windsor-Essex.

"One of the tenants of public health is trying to make it easy for people to do what they need to to protect themselves, and certainly for higher risk groups especially, this is a test that has value," he said.

According to Razak, while COVID-19 is not having the impact that it did back in 2020 to 2022,  "this is still an illness that is spreading unpredictably … and so you could get sick in the middle of summer. So, I think the idea of trying to help people protect themselves can still be part of the story, while we acknowledge that things are significantly better than they once were."

How to get a COVID-19 test

The provincial government says if you have COVID‑19 symptoms and are at a higher risk of severe illness, you should get tested for COVID‑19 and seek care as soon as possible, as you may benefit from available COVID‑19 treatments.

According to the province, you are eligible for publicly funded COVID-19 testing if you have COVID‑19 symptoms and belong to certain groups, including seniors and those who are immunocompromised.

If you develop symptoms and you are eligible for a publicly-funded test, provincial health authorities recommend you contact your primary care provider or pharmacist to find out about test availability and to arrange to take a test. If you are unsure if you are eligible for a PCR test, speak with your health care provider.

The latest data from the province shows the positivity rate of COVID-19 at 14.9 per cent. There were 89 outbreaks reported in the most recent week, hospital bed occupancy stood at 781, and there were six deaths linked to the virus.

This coming December will mark five years since the first case of the virus was detected.

Meanwhile, Razak said the unavailability of rapid antigen tests and "largely" losing the ability to monitor spread through wastewater means people need to be extra vigilant.

Ontario officially ended its COVID-19 wastewater surveillance program on July 31, but  the executive director of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) said this did not impact Windsor-Essex.

Mike McKay said the institute applied for a federal grant announced early May — part of the Canada biomedical research fund for pandemic preparedness — and received a $15 million grant over four years.

"In that proposal, we had actually included this strategic area, Windsor-Essex, as one of the places that we'd like to continue wastewater surveillance," McKay told CBC back in June.