The LifeLabs group of medical testing facilities is reducing public hours at its patient service centres in B.C. and Ontario as it shifts resources to assisting health ministries with COVID-19 testing.
Some of the companyB次元官网网址檚 facilities are closed and others are restricting hours as non-essential testing capacity is moved to take medical referrals for coronavirus testing, LifeLabs president Charles Brown said in a letter to customers March 30. The company is currently handling 600 tests a day in B.C. and 1,000 a day in Ontario.
B次元官网网址淧lease note, we are not testing for COVID-19 at our patient service centres,B次元官网网址� Brown said, citing the need for providing essential medical tests and managing with B次元官网网址渁 global shortage of protective equipment for our front-line staff.B次元官网网址�
LifeLabs urges customers to use its and B次元官网网址渟ave my spotB次元官网网址� app to reduce walk-in traffic and allow physical distancing in its public facilities.
People concerned about COVID-19 exposure or symptoms are being referred to the B.C. health ministryB次元官网网址檚 to get direction on their personal situation. Additional staff has been added to B.C.B次元官网网址檚 8-1-1 HealthLink phone line, which also has on health conditions.
B.C. has established an additional toll-free phone line at 1-888-268-4319 (1-888-COVID19) between 7:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. seven days a week for non-medical information about the virus. That includes the latest information on travel recommendations and social distancing, as well as access to support and services from the provincial and federal governments.
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B.C. has increased its COVID-19 testing capacity to about 3,000 per day with health authority labs and the assistance of LifeLabs. Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says testing has increasingly focused on daily checks of employees in hospitals and long-term care homes, where there has been a series of infection clusters that have resulted in deaths of people with underlying chronic health issues.
tfletcher@blackpress.ca
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