All COVID-19 testing centres in Ontario are moving to an appointment-based model.
On Friday, the Ontario government announced starting Tuesday, October 6, all testing will be done by appointment only except for at mobile or pop-up testing centres.
According to Premier Doug Ford, the move is being made to allow assessment centres to conduct enhanced screening and ensure people are not standing outside in the cold during the fall and winter.
"As the weather begins to worsen we can't have people waiting in the cold, waiting in the rain and snow to get a test so we're making these changes to help assessment centres get ready for winter," said Ford.
All assessment centres will stop walk-in testing services on Sunday, October 4, to give the province's lab network a chance to catch up. This will also allow the assessment centres to prepare for the appointment-based model.
On Friday afternoon there were 90,000 people waiting for COVID-19 test results. The government hopes to expand testing and processing capacity to 50,000 tests per day by mid-October and 68,000 tests per day by mid-November. Currently, around 40,000 tests are being processed daily.
