THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay Regional’s new COVID-19 assessment centre is set to open on Monday.
The facility, which includes a separate entrance, will be located in the medical building adjacent to the hospital, replaces a temporary trailer site located near the entrance to the emergency department, which has been in operation since the beginning of the pandemic.
Jackie Park, manager of pandemic community collaboration, screening and assessment, on Friday said the move to a more permanent facility was always the long-term plan and the timing couldn’t be better, with the arrival of winter weather in the city.
“It’s really difficult,” Park said of the current situation. “We have to physically run the charts from this building over to the trailers. It takes a long time. The winter is coming. We want to be in a space where patients don’t have to be outside to get in.
“The exterior door and space that’s going to be sustainable through the winter is what we want.”
Any patient with a test scheduled for Monday and beyond at the hospital will have it conducted at the new assessment centre.
They’re being directed to the entrance, located in the parking lot behind the medical centre, and specifically being told not to enter the building’s front doors, in order to prevent the possible spread of COVID-19 throughout the facility.
Park said they plan to do the swabbing in a main room.
“There will be three different cubicles where we do swabbing. As we move forward and the call centre moves out, which is going to happen on Wednesday, we’ll move into some assessment rooms. If this continues to go on for a long time and we need to do other tests, it may be something we can look into in the future.”
The call centre, which has hired on six more staff, will move to a Munro Street location, as will the on-duty nurse who calls people with their results.
Park said she’s confident the new assessment centre location, combined with a second one located at Confederation College, should more than meet the city’s testing needs, adding they have yet to reach their provincially mandated daily testing limit, a number she could not reveal.
Appointments will be required and same-day tests can be booked by visiting www.tbrhsc.net/bookonline or by phoning 935-8100. Only symptomatic patients, known contacts of an identified case or part of a high-risk group, such as health-care workers or first responders, are eligible for testing at the new centre.
The alternative site at the college provides testing for symptomatic students, parents and families, as well as school personnel and bus drivers. Additionally, tests will be done for people who require one for special circumstances, such as visiting long-term care facilities.
Park said the public must be also be aware they cannot attend the emergency department as an alternative to the testing centre.
Hours of operation at the assessment centre will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but with cases on the rise in Thunder Bay, Park said it’s something they could alter should demand grow and more tests are necessary.
