Ontario is now providing free rapid tests at 2,300 pharmacies and grocery stores

Feb 9 2022, 4:56 pm

Free COVID-19 rapid tests will be available at grocery stores and pharmacies across Ontario beginning today.

Ontario’s Chief Minister of Health Christine Elliott announced on Wednesday that the province would distribute a total of 44 million rapid tests over eight weeks at over 2,300 participating stores.

Nearly 5.5 million rapid tests will be available each week.

“In addition to the millions of rapid tests deployed each week to support priority settings, including hospitals, long-term care homes and schools, working with our retail and community partners we are increasing access to at-home rapid tests,” Elliott said.

The tests will come in kits of five per household, and each household will only get one per visit.

The province changed its testing criteria on December 31 in an effort to protect frontline workers, vulnerable residents, first responders, and other critical workforces.

This entails making publicly-funded PCR testing available only to high-risk individuals who are symptomatic and or are at risk of severe illness from COVID-19 (including for the purposes of confirming a COVID-19 diagnosis to begin treatment). Workers and residents in the highest-risk settings, and vulnerable populations, were also deemed eligible for PCR testing.

They also said that individuals with a positive result from a rapid antigen test no longer need to get a PCR or rapid molecular test for added confirmation and asked members of the general public with mild symptoms not to seek testing.

On January 31, Ontario entered the first step of its new reopening plan, lifting some restrictions and allowing restaurants and certain indoor public facilities to open back up and operate under loosened capacity limits.

The province is now looking forward to entering the next step of its reopening plan on February 21, when further COVID-19 restrictions will be lifted and loosened. These include:

  • Social gathering limits increasing to 25 people indoors and 100 people outdoors.
  • Capacity limits to be removed in “indoor public settings where proof of vaccination is required,” including restaurants, indoor sports and gyms, movie theatres.
  • Allowing capacity at sporting events, concert venues, and theatres to 50%
  • “Limiting capacity in most remaining indoor public settings where proof of vaccination is not required to the number of people that can maintain two metres of physical distance.”
  • Indoor religious services, rites or ceremonies are limited to how many people can maintain two metres of distance. If proof of vaccination is required, there is no limit.
  • Indoor capacity limits increased to 25% in other higher-risk settings where proof of vaccination is required, including nightclubs, wedding receptions in meeting or event spaces where there is dancing, and bathhouses and sex clubs.

An enhanced proof of vaccination would still be required for these areas.

“Providing expanded access to testing for Ontarians will support the province’s cautious approach to easing public health measures,” said Dr. Kieran Moore, Chief Medical Officer of Health. “While testing is a critical component in our response to COVID-19, vaccination remains the best defence against the virus and its variants. Over the next few months, we need to continue following the public health measures that remain in place and vaccinate those who have yet to receive their doses to protect our communities and health care system capacity.”

As of February 8, over 75 million rapid antigen tests have been deployed since November 2020. To date, Ontario has directly procured a total of about 157 million rapid tests, including 126 million between December 2021 and January 2022.

A list of participating retailers as well as information on how retail locations are distributing rapid test kits can be found at Ontario.ca/rapidtest.

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