EXCERPTS
Early-education and child-care centres on P.E.I. are now handing out rapid COVID-19 screening tests for parents to administer to their children at home.
Adina Nault is the director of the early-years centre l'île Enchantée in Charlottetown. She says she didn't want to send every parent home with a full pack of rapid tests.
"I didn't want them to be wasted. We know that it's limited in supply and we don't know when we're going to get the next shipment in," she said.
"I would much rather see one family take a few extra steps if they're going to use it rather than to send them home, to be sitting on the shelf or just thrown out."
Centres only started handing out test kits on Tuesday. Nault said any parent who decides they need a test will be given one.
"I'm not wasting tests sending them to homes that may not be comfortable or want to use it," she said, adding parents do have the alternative to get their children tested at a COVID-19 testing clinic.
The centre also plans to send tests home with kids who aren't feeling well, even if the parent hasn't asked for a test, Nault said. But the hope is to keep some stock at the centre.
According to the province's website, over 60,000 at-home rapid tests for COVID-19 have been given out across the province.
The tests require parents to insert a swab in a child's nostril and swirl it around five times, before doing the same with the other nostril, according to a video put out by the province.
Rainbow Beginnings, an early-education centre in St. Teresa, has given out tests to all parents in case they need them, said owner Jamie Mosher.
The centre is giving each parent a full pack of five rapid COVID-19 screening tests, Mosher said.
Mosher decided to deliver the news to parents in person so there was no confusion.
"At Rainbow, we greet every parent every morning to find that screening questionnaire," she said.
"We didn't want to post anything in case people were, like, in mass hysteria thinking that they had to test their children before they came to Rainbow to allow them to come for the day."
Testing requirements haven't changed at the centre. If a child has new or worsening fatigue, congestion, sneezing or coughing, staff ask the child to be tested before coming to the centre, Mosher said.
While Mosher said she doesn't know of anyone at the centre who had to use a test yet, she has spoken to parents who picked up a rapid test at Access PEI who told her it was convenient to not have to go to a testing clinic the second their kid gets sick.
Currently the province is providing two different rapid testing options for COVID-19. The Lucira Check-it Self-Test and Rapid Response Rapid Antigen Tests.