Although Ontario's holiday testing blitz offering free rapid antigen screening to individuals is well underway across the province, the City of Guelph has not yet been deemed an area of concern.
This means no pop-up take-home rapid antigen test kits are expected to come to Guelph until next week at the very earliest.
According to the provincial website, Guelph is not the only city currently void of rapid tests pop-up sites as the neighbouring cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge have also not been identified as areas of higher traffic.
New locations will be posted on Fridays, and on a rolling basis as sites are confirmed.
Of the five listed pop-up sites for Thursday, if someone living in Guelph wanted a free test kit they would be required to drive to the closest pop-up located at Yorkdale Mall for the 10:00 a.m. release of the kits.
The pop-up sites listed for this coming Friday are also few and far in between with the closest location the Tecumseh Mall in Windsor.
"Two million rapid tests are being provided with free of charge at pop-up testing sites in high-traffic settings such as malls, retail settings, holiday markets, public libraries and transit hubs," said Anna Miller, senior communications advisor with the Ontario Ministry of Health.
"Locations across the province were identified by local health partners and businesses where higher traffic is anticipated over the holiday season and where vaccinated and unvaccinated people are likely to gather. More sites across the province will be added to the website on a weekly basis."
A staff member at the Guelph Public Library said although the library systems were deemed locations for rapid test kit distribution, no branches within the Guelph Public Library system have received any test kits and no information has been provided on when test kits can be expected to arrive.
"So far, two LCBOs in Guelph have handed out COVID-19 take-home rapid test kits," said Miller.
The two LCBOs that did receive the rapid tests kits on Friday both ran out within hours, and one location was faced with a late delivery which left people who showed up before the store opened scrambling with questions the staff couldn't answer.
"Ontario has a limited supply of rapid tests and every single test the province has received from the federal government is on its way out the door to thousands of workplaces, hospitals, home and community care settings, long-term care homes, schools and child care centres on top of the many pop-up sites across the province," said Miller. "In addition to Ontario directly procuring additional rapid tests where possible, we are continuing to urge the federal government to make more rapid tests available to provinces as quickly as possible."
Chuck Ferguson, communications manager with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, said if the province does establish a pop-up rapid test distribution site in our area Public Health will certainly promote its location on our website and social media.
As of now, Public Health has not been notified of any pending sites to date.
Ferguson did note that if a local business or organization is looking for rapid tests for their members or staff, they can request rapid tests, or checking in with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce as it is rolling out free rapid tests for small- and medium-sized businesses in communities across the province.
There are currently 273 reported active cases in Guelph with 48 new cases reported in Guelph on Wednesday.