Alumni share experiences offering asymptomatic COVID-19 testing in Alberta

Chelsea Kwong in the pharmacy. With COVID-19 testing rolling out in Ontario pharmacies, Chelsea and Melanie Sanderson, alumni in Alberta, share how the experience has gone in their province.

On Sept 25, Ontario’s government announced that 60 pharmacies across the province would begin rolling out COVID-19 testing for select patients who are not exhibiting any COVID-19 symptoms. Called asymptomatic testing, these tests would be available by appointment only for those meet one of the criteria identified by the government.

Asymptomatic COVID-19 testing in pharmacies is already in place in Alberta and participating pharmacies have been conducting testing by appointment since June. Chelsea Kwong (BScPharm’13, PharmD’17) and Melanie Sanderson (PharmD’18) are School of Pharmacy alumni who led the roll-out of this testing at their community pharmacy in Lethbridge, Alberta.

“We’ve always known that pharmacists are the most accessible health-care providers, but this has never proven more true than during the pandemic,” Chelsea says.

Like many pharmacies across the country in March, Chelsea’s workplace was swamped with inquiries about COVID-19 from Albertans who were often simply looking for more information. During COVID-19’s early months in Canada, Alberta pharmacies remained open while many other health-care offices closed, and the province’s 811 HealthLink was overwhelmed with calls. Pharmacies filled a gap, providing accessible and efficient health-care, so it’s no surprise that provincial leadership considered pharmacists when determining how to ramp up Alberta’s testing capacity.

“To us, it made sense that we offered this service, “Chelsea says. “In Alberta, pharmacists already play a large role supporting public health. We give vaccinations and can assess patients and prescribe certain medications. Our hours are flexible and long, and we saw that patients appreciated our availability, especially in those early days of the pandemic.”

Melanie and Chelsea’s pharmacy was one of the first to roll out asymptomatic COVID testing. By July, they were offering twenty-minute appointments throughout the day. Patients are screened ahead of time and if they qualify, they can book an appointment. Someone from the pharmacy calls the patient the day before their test to ensure that they do not show any COVID-19 symptoms. If they do show symptoms, they are referred to the Alberta Health Services’ testing centers.

Once they arrive at the pharmacy, patients are taken to a dedicated room for the sample collection. Melanie or Chelsea, wearing full personal protective equipment, walk them through the process, collect the necessary forms and conduct a throat swab. The sample is sealed in a biohazard bag and sent to an Alberta Health Services lab for analysis. The patients receive a phone call or text from both the pharmacy and the province’s health service in a few days.

“We have the training to deliver this kind of assessment,” Melanie says, “so we weren’t daunted taking on this additional role. We’re fortunate that we work at a large and well-staffed pharmacy where we were able to fit this testing into our existing work flow.”

Safety for the staff and existing customers was top of mind for Melanie, Chelsea and their team as they rolled the service out. They developed a robust plan and new procedures to ensure proper sanitation and flow of the testing patients in and out of their pharmacy. They also received training materials from both their company and Alberta Health Services.

Patients have appreciated pharmacists’ contributions to testing, and since the initial pilot of seventeen locations, more pharmacies have begun to offer testing. Since Melanie and Chelsea’s pharmacy first began testing in July, they have collected between 400 and 500 samples and had only one positive case.