Horizon Health has confirmed that the site, located at the Tantramar Civic Centre, was performing a maximum of 19 tests per day last week, in its first week of operation.
This week, the intention is to build up to 35 tests per day, says Horizon spokesperson Kris McDavid.
MLA Megan Mitton says that there are hundreds of people in the Tantramar area now required to do weekly COVID-19 testing due to changes to border rules.
The Sackville testing site opened on Tuesday, Jan. 26 after a considerable amount of effort by a number of different people, says Sackville Deputy Mayor Ron Aiken, including the Tantramar COVID-19 Task Force, MLA Megan Mitton, the president of Mount Allison Jean-Paul Boudreau, and Aiken himself.
Aiken says the argument was that with new demands for testing of cross-border commuters and with students coming and going, Sackville was a “logical place” to have a testing site.
But the long awaited Sackville site has not gone off without a hitch.
Like all COVID-19 testing centres in New Brunswick, the Sackville site works by appointment only.
When area residents tried to book appointments, they immediately noticed that when requesting COVID-19 testing on the province’s online form, the Sackville site is not listed as an option.
Horizon Health then clarified that since Sackville was a temporary site, it would not be added to the online request form. Instead, residents were told to first request a Moncton site and then specify Sackville when they got a call back to book their test.
In some cases this is adding an extra step.
When people fill out an online request for test at the Georges Dumont hospital in Moncton, they get a call back from the Vitalité Health Network. And after asking for a test Sackville, they are told to wait for another call back, this time from the Horizon Health Network, in order to book a test at the Sackville site.
Sackville resident Sherry MacIsaac Porter says the first time her husband requested a test, he ended up waiting four days before a call back to schedule it in Sackville. It’s not clear whether that delay was due to communications between Vitalité and Horizon, or just delays related to the Sackville site.
The second time he requested a test, Porter says he waited one day for his second call back.
Porter says she doesn’t understand why the Sackville location can’t simply be added to the online request form.
“It shouldn’t matter if it’s temporary or not,” she says. “It can’t be that complicated to add Sackville as a choice and remove it if/when the time comes.”
CHMA has a request in to Horizon to explain the difficulties in booking. In the meantime, it might be a safer bet to select the Moncton Coliseum on the province’s online test request form. The Coliseum site is run by Horizon, which also runs the Sackville site.
If you have any questions or concerns about COVID-19 testing in Sackville, please get in touch with news@chmafm.com.
Sackville’s COVID-19 testing site will soon nearly double its capacity.
Hear this story as reported on Tantramar Report: