OLDS — The town's acting director of emergency management, Jennifer Lutz, is repeating a call for businesses to take advantage of a free rapid COVID-19 screening test.
Currently the test is being made available to Town of Olds employees, but Lutz said businesses can apply for it too.
The test is done via a nasal swab and results are available in 15 minutes.
Lutz first promoted the test for businesses during an April 12 council meeting, then promoted it again during council’s April 26 meeting.
She stressed businesses can’t utilize the test offered to town employees. It’s for the town’s essential and emergency services workers as well as RCMP. But town officials can provide businesses with advice on how to obtain their own tests.
Lutz took the test on April 26.
“It wasn’t too difficult. I didn’t cry too much. It made me feel more comfortable coming into the office, knowing I wasn’t going to impact any of my co-workers," said Lutz.
“Just another tool in the toolbox to manage the spread."
Lutz admitted the way the test is administered isn’t perhaps the most enticing, but it’s well worth it to know whether or not you have the virus.
“Not everybody wants something up their nose, but we’re trying to say it’s really not too bad and we encourage staff to participate,” she said. “We did get good uptake from Olds Fire (Department) and RCMP.”
Protective services director Justin Andrew agreed that uptake by fire department employees and others in the protective services realm has been good, even though as of April 26, the program had only been operating in Olds for a week or so.
He said Alberta Health Services officials have made it easy for protective services employees to participate by offering the tests during hours that work best for them.
For example, it’s being offered to firefighters on Wednesday evenings, when they normally do their training.
“Obviously with school exposures and things like that, there’s lots of people worried and concerned and so we’ve been able to help that with our essential workers,” he said.
