If your child gets sick in class, when the school calls you to pick them up, there may be a COVID-19 test kit sent home with them.

“Kids can be fine in the morning but by afternoon they have a runny nose and fever. So, the symptoms can develop in the course of a school day. That’s what this test is for, those situations,” says BC Children’s Hospital (BCCH) medical microbiologist Dr. David Goldfarb.

The parents can watch a short instructional video on how to collect the most accurate sample possible before helping their child with the swish, gargle and spit collection method. They then drop the sample off to any LifeLabs or directly to BCCH. 

Goldfarb cautions parents not to send their child to school sick in order to get the test but rather go directly to a testing facility. The main one for Richmond is a drive-through at Vancouver International Airport. Guidelines for who should seek COVID-19 testing are available online.

Ageusia, the lack of sense of taste, is one clear symptom. According to Dr. Meena Dawar, Richmond’s medical health officer, there are no other viruses circulating right now that can take away a person’s sense of taste.

In a joint program with BCCH, each school in the Richmond School District has 12 swish-gargle-spit test kits. 

“The district is not sent test results,” explains Richmond School District spokesperson David Sadler. “As per (Vancouver Coastal Health) protocols, the district is notified if there is a confirmed exposure in a school.”

Goldfarb says, “The idea of the program is to make testing for COVID-19 more feasible for families.” He also says that after a school’s first 12 kits are used up, more can be supplied.

The home sampling program, originally tested in selected schools in the Vancouver School District, required new alliances to expand.

“In order for us to scale up we partnered with LifeLabs who have centres across the Lower Mainland. They were really crucial. We couldn’t do it without them.”

In a pandemic where many are pitching in, the company trained hundreds of staff to handle these new, incoming samples.

Once a sample arrives at BCCH, it is handled like any other, Goldfarb says. His lab then uses the gold standard test, PCR, to look for the virus.

Goldfarb’s lab has shown the tests using home-collected samples are as accurate as those done on a nasal swab done by a medical professional.

He says the schools’ test kits, at about $2 each, are cost-effective and do not expire. Provincially funded, they are given free of charge to the schools. 

He says the program is going to run certainly until the end of the school year in the schools already participating: “We’ll have to see how things are in the fall. We will be leaving the kits at the schools and we will see how things go to see if they are utilized in the next school year.”

And what about other school districts that want these tests? 

With an eye to the challenges faced by families seeking health care outside a large urban centre, Goldfarb says, “I’ve worked a fair bit in Nunavut where healthcare can be geographically distant.”  So any district is welcome to approach him, Goldfarb says. “If they are interested, they can reach out to us and we can put together materials for them.” 

As the pandemic continues, Goldfarb looks to other countries’ use of these home collection kits. For example, he says, “In Vienna they have them at all pharmacies so people can just pick one up there.” He talks of the vending machines in Asia and the U.S. offering the same kits. 

Goldfarb says, “We could do similar innovations to increase the access to testing.”

In a city like Richmond, where the majority of the testing is at a drive through facility, while 30 per cent of our population uses only public transit to get around, this would give more people safe access to testing without having to use buses or Skytrain when they suspect they are already infectious. 

One problem with COVID-19 is that the initial symptoms can be so mild that a person doesn’t notice them. That is the infectious stage, when a person should be tested. That is one reason COVID-19 can spread so rapidly. That is one reason microbiologists like Goldfarb appreciate wider testing for the virus. 

Because of the ease of sample collection, accuracy of the testing, and low cost, Goldfarb sees the possibility of greater use for these kits. By testing more people, even those without symptoms—also called asymptomatic—these hidden infections could be found and further transmission of COVID-19 stopped. 

In a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, renowned researchers Dr. Eric Topol and Dr. Daniel Oran say, “Asymptomatic persons seem to account for approximately 40 per cent to 45 per cent of (COVID-19) infections, and they can transmit the virus to others for an extended period, perhaps longer than 14 days.”

Because so many, in particular children, can be infected and able to spread the virus without feeling sick, Goldfarb discusses the value of widespread testing, to keep track of where and when the virus is popping up: “I think surveillance going to be a bigger factor. Now that we realize we could have deadly pandemic circulating under our noses.”