April 8th, 2020

Horwath says Ford must deliver change in testing, this time

QUEEN’S PARK — Andrea Horwath, Leader of the Official Opposition New Democrats, released the following statement:

“Doug Ford has been too slow to react to the fact that COVID-19 testing has had unacceptably tight criteria, and lagged far behind need. Frontline workers and experts have been warning the government for quite some time now that this is a problem. Mr. Ford and Ms. Elliott have repeatedly said they’re ramping up, expanding and surging testing – and that didn’t happen. This time, it has to.”

Background

March 30:

Premier Doug Ford: “We are surging the system and testing as many people as possible.”

https:/globalnews.ca/news/6752239/coronavirus-ontario-behind-covid-19-testing/

March 26:

Premier Doug Ford: “We have increased the assessment areas right across this province and we are going to continue just putting a surge on this every single day.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gLGGhhq5Rk

March 24:

Minister Christine Elliott said 5,000 tests a day would be reached "by the end of this week."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid19-ontario-coronavirus-positive-tests-cases-1.5507211

March 20:

Minister Christine Elliott spokesperson confirms 50,000 new testing kits.

https://ipolitics.ca/2020/03/20/ontario-promised-50000-more-covid-19-test-kits-by-federal-government/

March 19:

Minister Christine Elliott: “Ontario is making meaningful progress in expanding our screening and testing capacity”

https://twitter.com/celliottability/status/1240790310617321476

March 18:

Minister Christine Elliott: “A four-day wait is not acceptable, and so we are working on doing much better than that and I anticipate that we will be caught up very shortly with the lab tests”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/18/news/ontario-struggling-deal-covid-19-testing-backlog

March 12:

Premier Doug Ford said his government was “expanding lab-testing capacity”

https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2020/03/title.html