Ottawa- On March 30th, 2020, Ontario had their largest single-day increase of 351 new COVID-19 cases. In conjunction with other provinces, the Ontario government changed the priority of who gets tested. This means that the only people being tested are front-line healthcare workers and those who are very sick and admitted to hospital.

The provincial government has plans to change this strategy by increasing testing with help from Spartan Bioscience. The Government of Ontario has purchased nearly 1 million test kits, pending approval from Health Canada.

According to Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, “When you have major asymptomatic transmission, you have to test everybody because there are people wandering around shedding the virus who don’t know it.”

Spartan is proudly Canadian and proud to increase the number of tests available across Canada.