A COVID-19 testing clinic has been set up at N.J. Macpherson for staff and students, as public health tries to manage the surge in people who need testing for the virus.
The GNWT’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Team has set up a testing location in the school’s gymnasium on May 4 and May 5, 2021 for students and staff. This testing clinic is not open to the general public.
In an email, a spokesperson for the YK1 school board said school administration has already distributed a list of testing times for individual classes. Students and staff are asked to only go to the gymnasium during their scheduled time slot, to enter through the front door and head directly to the school gymnasium.
The move to introduce more testing locations comes as both Dr. AnneMarie Pegg, the territory’s chief medical doctor and Dr. Kami Kandola the NWT’s Chief Public Health Officer urged residents to only book a COVID-19 test if they had been contacted by public health.
This is because with the high number of contacts and exposure notices, there’s’ a risk the city’s testing facilities could become overwhelmed, causing delays.
“With the capacity that we have, we really need to do our very best to do the tests on the people who are most likely to be affected first,” said Pegg in a press conference on Monday.
Around 1,000 contacts have been identified so far stemming from the outbreak at N.J. Macpherson School. After wastewater testing detected traces of COVID-19 earlier in April, over 900 people were tested for the virus.
