Canada bringing back mandatory random testing of travelers arriving at main airports - starting July 19th 2022

[Barwick Cruiser]

16 hours ago, broberts said:

 

I don't understand all the hand-wringing. Presumably those selected for testing that have a connecting flight will be given a self swab kit as described at https://travel.gc.ca/travel-covid/travel-restrictions/covid-vaccinated-travellers-entering-canada#arrival.

That link basically says that travellers selected for random testing don’t need to wait for results before taking their connecting flight, nothing about where they’re supposed to get tested. Like you, I’d like to presume they’ll be given a self swab kit to be proctored but there’s nothing saying how they’re supposed to do that when they’ll have to rush to get their luggage go through customs and try to make their connection…now they need to test as well? Will be more than 24 hours from their arrival in Vancouver until we see them in Kingston so not like they can do it when they get here….so many different situations for travellers and very little specific info from the government…that’s why all the handwringing. Thx for letting me vent 🙏🤣

[broberts]

9 minutes ago, Mikamarii said:

I read the article and one thing it doesn't talk about is international travellers coming for cruises. Its a small market but still. We are on a transpacific leaving Hawaii in Oct and many on that cruise are doing a b2b leaving Vancouver. Hopefully the international travelers landing in Vancouver for the cruise don't get selected!

 

Another interesting thing from the article came from the comments. Someone mentioned that Theresa Tam has published articles regarding transmission on planes and is doing this to support her own data. Naturally I went looking and found three papers she co-authored/published.

 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Theresa-Tam-2

 

I've gone through one of the articles and found a very interesting conclusion.  Now granted this is from 2005 and related to SARS which wasn't nearly as prevalent. This came from Article titled 

 

Border screening for SARS

 

Part of the conclusion 

 

"An estimated Can$7.55 million was invested in airport

screening measures from March 18 to July 5. Rather than

investing in airport screening measures to detect rare infec-

tious diseases, investments should be used to strengthen

screening and infection control capacities at points of entry

into the healthcare system. Additional useful measures

could focus on public education about infectious disease

prevention and care"

 

What is your point? The current random testing is not "screening". 

[gnome12]

14 minutes ago, Mikamarii said:

I've gone through one of the articles and found a very interesting conclusion.  Now granted this is from 2005 and related to SARS which wasn't nearly as prevalent. This came from Article titled 

 

Border screening for SARS

 

Part of the conclusion 

 

"An estimated Can$7.55 million was invested in airport

screening measures from March 18 to July 5. Rather than

investing in airport screening measures to detect rare infec-

tious diseases, investments should be used to strengthen

screening and infection control capacities at points of entry

into the healthcare system. Additional useful measures

could focus on public education about infectious disease

prevention and care"

I just note that the term used is “rare infectious  diseases”, which unfortunately Covid is not. 

[Mikamarii]

3 minutes ago, broberts said:

 

What is your point? The current random testing is not "screening". 

Relax there....No where in my post was I 'making a point" I said it was an interesting conclusion.

 

You can take from it whatever you want.

[DirtyDawg]

19 hours ago, Fouremco said:

It would be interesting to know how successful the random testing was in identifying the influx of the BA.5 variant. Given the rapid spread of BA.5 in Canada, it would seem that the testing was either unsuccessful in identify its arrival here, or it was successful in noting its arrival but nothing was done about it. In either case, the utility of the random testing is certainly questionable.

By nature I am also sceptical when any of our governments try to run anything. More so now that I've been part of the post secondary education system for the past few years. They tend to find the most inefficient, bureaucratically convoluted solutions to the simplest of problems. That said, I'm not getting my boxers in a twist over this one. The information gained might be useful. I don't know for sure because I'm not a profession in this field. The costs are relatively small. (Hey, after that 2020/21 Federal deficit of $ 314  billion everything else is relatively small). Sure it affects the tourist industry negatively but with inflation at it's current levels, do we really need any more aggregate demand in the economy in mid 2022 driving GDP and inflation even higher? So, I'm going to chill, enjoy our summer vacation in Ontari-ari-o and only worry about things I can actually do something about. 

 

Enjoy your summer everyone!