COVID-19 testing performed on ID NOW instruments in emergency rooms across NHA has been permanently discontinued, effective immediately.
Provincial support for pandemic response has ended, and PHSA will no longer be supplying reagents, service contracts, or the eFORM result reporting platform. Medical Health Officers have indicated that testing is no longer necessary from a Public Health perspective. Sites wishing to continue testing can request to keep their instrument but will need to assume all costs associated with testing.
Action required:
Please send COVID-19 samples to the nearest reference laboratory for testing (UHNBC, Mills Memorial Hospital, Ft. St. John Hospital, Haida Gwaii Hospital).
Discard remaining ID NOW reagents as non-biohazardous waste and return the instruments to your local laboratory after performing a thorough decontamination (refer to ID NOW COVID-19 Rapid Test Procedure, page 4). Laboratories are to update their equipment records and ship the instruments to Greg Schurack/ UHNBC Laboratory.
Sites wishing to continue testing can submit a POC Request to bonnie.mctaggart@northernhealth.ca.
Important: COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Tests must not be used as a replacement. These tests are not approved for use in sites under diagnostic accreditation due to their low sensitivity.
Questions may be directed to: Bonnie.McTaggart@northernhealth.ca
For more information, see the full memo.