‘Like Wartime’: Canadian companies team up to launch massive virus tests

TORONTO – While frustration is increasing in Canada with the lead weight of blockages and the glacial pace of vaccinations, a consortium of some of the country’s largest companies has launched a rapid test program to protect its 350,000 employees and publish a manual for companies across Canada on how to reopen safely.

The program is considered the first of its kind among the Group of 7 industrialized countries and has already attracted the attention of the Biden government.

The 12 companies, including Canada’s largest supermarket and airline network, worked together for four months, create a 400-page operating manual on how to perform rapid antigen tests in various work environments. They began testing tests at their workplaces this month and hope to expand the program to 1,200 small and medium-sized businesses.

They also plan to share the test results with government health officials, considerably increasing the number of tests in the country and providing an informal study of the spread of the virus among asymptomatic people.

“It’s like in wartime – people get together to do something that is in everyone’s interest,” said Marc Mageau, senior vice president of refining and logistics at Suncor Energy, the country’s largest oil producer, who presented the test to your employees this month.

The program faces some inherent challenges – after an outbreak last year at the White House, antigen tests have become known to generate false negatives and a false sense of security. They are also scarce in Canada, with some experts arguing that they should be reserved for schools and nursing homes, rather than non-essential businesses.

Although vaccines are considered the best weapon in the world to defeat the pandemic, most experts believe it will take months, if not an entire year, for Canada to reach the levels of vaccination that allow workplaces to safely return to their homes. operations prior to Covid.

Canada is in the grip of a second pandemic wave that has brought infections to record levels and deaths to about 19,800. In response, many parts of the country are closed, with restaurants, theaters and non-essential retail stores closed.

The Canadian economy contracted about 5% during the pandemic. Some sectors, such as real estate and manufacturing, performed well, but those that depend on the public, such as entertainment and hospitality, saw their jobs plummet.

“Think of downtown Toronto: there is no one else there. Entertainment – it’s all stopped, ”said Joshua Gans, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto who served as a consultant on the project and is the author of “The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of Covid-19.”

“The time has come to think about how to really reopen sectors that have been closed,” he said.

The consortium companies were brought together in the spring by Ajay Agrawal, founder of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Laboratory, that helps science and technology start-ups. They were inspired by the most Canadian of the muses: Margaret Atwood, the author.

“When can we have a cheap self-administered test, buy it at the drugstore?” Ms. Atwood asked during a virtual meeting last May with business leaders and others charged with brainstorming economic recovery during the pandemic.

The problem, the group postulated, was the “information gap” – since there was no way of knowing who could be an asymptomatic carrier, everyone was treated as a potential threat.

Mrs. Atwood envisioned something like a home pregnancy test.

“That would be a game changer,” she said.

Realizing that the government was overwhelmed by the health crisis, the group decided to take on the task alone, forming a consortium led by the Creative Destruction Laboratory.

The group focused on testing antigens because of their speed, price and usefulness: they can produce results in minutes, do not need a laboratory and, in Canada, can cost between $ 5 and about $ 20.

But they are less accurate and produce more false negatives than the gold standard polymerase chain reaction or PCR tests, which can cost 20 times more. The three antigen tests approved for use in Canada mark between 84% and 96.7% of people infected with the virus.

In Britain, testing for antigens used in a mass testing campaign identified only two-fifths of the cases of coronaviruses detected by PCR tests.

For this reason, many experts in Canada and elsewhere initially argued that it was wiser to expand PCR testing. But as the pandemic has spread and the country has failed to meet its testing targets, that thinking has changed, said Dr. Irfan Dhalla, co-chairman of the Canadian testing and screening advisory panel for Covid-19, who recommended increasing the country the use of rapid tests.

“A rapid antigen test is clearly better than no test, as long as it is not used as a free pass, ”said Dr. Dhalla. “Whether it’s a workplace or a school, you still need to wear a mask and physically distance yourself as much as you can.”

Consortium members hope that, in the long term, the testing program will help to reduce infection rates enough to allow them to return to crowded restaurants and board meetings. But in the meantime, they plan to use the tests as an additional layer of protection – in addition to wearing masks, engaging in social detachment and pre-screening employees so that those with symptoms stay at home.

Consortium companies also test their employees twice a week, increasing the chances of catching positive cases.

“Everyone is looking for a silver bullet. We realize that it doesn’t exist. Neither is it, ”said Laura Rosella, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto and advisor to the project.

In September, more than 100 employees of the consortium started working together, at the expense of their companies, to develop a plan. Two retired generals volunteered to help manage logistics.

The group registered as a nonprofit organization called the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium in November, with each company contributing $ 230,000 to operating costs.

Working in teams, employees researched about 50 different antigen tests emerging around the world, analyzed what was needed for a screening program – from the team to the number of aprons – and estimated the overall cost.

The resulting 400-page operating manual includes everything from an example of an employee invitation to join the program and a standard consent form, to the detailed shopping list of materials needed to run a program.

One obstacle was acquiring tests. They had to get them from the government because they are not yet widely available in Canada and there is a high demand for schools and nursing homes.

“We are going to do the tests there first,” said Dhalla, referring to essential schools, nursing homes and workplaces. “As we gain experience, we can talk about how to get people back to work, where working from home is an option.”

In January, five of the companies started piloting the program in environments as diverse as pharmacies and radio stations. So far, about 400 employees have volunteered and nearly 1,900 tests have been carried out. Only three gave positive results, according to Sonia Sennik, executive director of Creative Destruction Lab and enthusiastic defender of the project.

“They did not go to the workplace and potentially spread something,” said Sennik. “We broke the transmission chain three times.”

The companies found that the program reduces employee anxiety not only about going to work, but also about coming home every day, she said.

“I am relieved,” said Mohamed Gaballa, an Air Canada employee who completed the test during a break at Toronto Pearson International Airport. In 15 minutes, he appeared in the email: “Your screening result is negative. You can get on with your day. “

“This has been a missing piece in Canada for a long time,” said Dan Kelly, president and chief executive of Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, which represents 110,000 small and medium-sized businesses.

Small businesses face many more obstacles to implementing a program like this, even with the help of a 400-page manual, he said. There is the cost of the exams, but more importantly, of the team that administers them.

Kelly figured the program wouldn’t work in busy restaurants and stores – places where the number of untracked customers far outnumbers the number of employees selected, unless the plan was to test them as well. But in kitchens, small warehouses, small factories and offices, “this test can be very useful,” he said.

“Under normal circumstances, the idea of ​​small businesses doing employee-based testing for anything would be a fantasy,” said Kelly, who is part of the federal government’s industry consulting group on Covid-19 tests. “But in this case, given the degree of desperation to obtain or remain open among small business owners, there is a potential appetite for that.”