Ontario's expert science advisers say the rapid tests are better at detecting Omicron if people swab both cheeks, followed by the back of the tongue or throat, then both nostrils.
Just to distinguish, here’s the data from Ontario Health:
On the week of October 16th, Ontario did 200,000 tests. By way of comparison, the city I live in (Wuhan) on the week of October 16th did approximately 70,000,000 tests. But hey, what’s two orders of magnitude in the face of a lethal disease that’s changing its genetics more often than most people change their underwear!
In that week, there were approximately 30,000 positive hits in all of Ontario. The population of Ontario is 13.6 million, give or take. The population of Wuhan is 10-11 million (so roughly the same). I can’t easily get the data for October 16th, but I can easily get the data for the week after (October 25th-31st) which is reasonably comparable. Wuhan had 312 positives in that time. So basically the week after Ontario had 30,000 positive results, Wuhan had 312 positives, despite, and I can’t emphasize this enough, Wuhan doing TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE TESTING.
Or you can, you know, just test often enough that individual tests failing aren’t as much an issue as if you only test once per blue moon.
Just to distinguish, here’s the data from Ontario Health:
On the week of October 16th, Ontario did 200,000 tests. By way of comparison, the city I live in (Wuhan) on the week of October 16th did approximately 70,000,000 tests. But hey, what’s two orders of magnitude in the face of a lethal disease that’s changing its genetics more often than most people change their underwear!
In that week, there were approximately 30,000 positive hits in all of Ontario. The population of Ontario is 13.6 million, give or take. The population of Wuhan is 10-11 million (so roughly the same). I can’t easily get the data for October 16th, but I can easily get the data for the week after (October 25th-31st) which is reasonably comparable. Wuhan had 312 positives in that time. So basically the week after Ontario had 30,000 positive results, Wuhan had 312 positives, despite, and I can’t emphasize this enough, Wuhan doing TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE TESTING.
Sorry. Did I say “despite”? I meant “because”.