Government cracking down on private COVID-19 clinics allowing people to bypass testing lines for a fee
Posted October 5, 2020 4:30 pm.
The Ford government is trying to crack down on private clinics that allow people to bypass COVID-19 testing line for a fee.
These four profit clinics serve both individual patients and companies looking for tests charging people anywhere from $50 to $250 dollars for a test and no waiting in line.
The Ford government announced one measure to try and crack down on this.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said these clinics cannot use any publicly-purchased test swabs.
She says private companies can still conduct private testing, as long as they pay for the swabs themselves.
According to the Globe and Mail, Ontario’s lab network, where all test samples are sent, had just less than 79,000 samples in the queue waiting to be tested on Saturday.
Some point towards these private clinics as evidence of a two-tiered health system, althought the clinics contend they’re not creating resources from the public sector, nothing they use commercial labs to process the tests.
