On Tuesday, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison announced 704 new cases of COVID-19 in PEI, giving the Island 4,596 active cases. Over the past 7 days, PEI has seen an average of 506 new cases per day.
Dr. Morrison says PEI’s testing capacity is strained. There were 13-thousand COVID-19 tests conducted last week at Health PEI clinics, with an average of 1,850 tests per day.
To ease the strain and ensure the testing resources are targeted appropriately, the eligibility criteria for COVID-19 testing at the Health PEI clinics for individuals who are close contacts is changing immediately. These changes in eligibility mean:
- You only need to get a Day 4 test if you are a close contact and live or work in a high risk setting. This would include individuals like health care workers, first responders, long term care and community care residents)
- Close contacts without symptoms of COVID-19, who do not live or work in high risk settings, do not need to get a Day 4 test at a Health PEI clinic. They do need to monitor for symptoms.
- If you are a close contact of a positive case, and you develop symptoms, you do not need to be tested at a clinic and can assume you’re positive for COVID-19 and isolate for 7 days if you’re fully vaccinated, or 10 days if not fully vaccinated.
- But, symptomatic close contacts of a positive case who are over the age of 50; who are pregnant; less than 5-years old; or who are 18 years and older with underlying medical conditions should seek testing at a Health PEI clinic.
- Other symptomatic close contacts of positive cases do not need to seek testing and can assume they are positive.
Health PEI testing clinics will continue to test symptomatic individuals or those with a positive rapid antigen screening test if they present at a testing clinic.
Dr. Morrison says that, as planned, PEI will be moving to Phase 2 of the Moving On Plan on March 17th. She also still expects Phase 3 to go ahead on or before April 7th.
