If you’re flying into Toronto’s Pearson International Airport today, you may need to adjust your itinerary slightly before setting foot in the city.
That’s because mandatory random testing for COVID-19 is back at Canada’s busiest airport for fully vaccinated passengers.
The measure was suspended by the federal government on June 11 and resumed Tuesday in Toronto, as well as at airports in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.
However, the process is slightly different than before.
In the past, passengers’ passports were randomly marked by customs for spot checks.
Passengers who qualify as fully vaccinated will now receive an email notification within 15 minutes of completing their customs declaration notifying them that they have been selected for the test.
However, the test itself will not be held at Pearson – which is welcome news for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA), the group that runs the airport, which has been plagued by delays for months.
If you happen to receive an email after you’ve cleared customs, the message will contain information to help you arrange a test in your area.
“In him [the email], it will say “you are selected” and you either go to a pharmacy or company that is selected to go, or a virtual test at home. You have to do it within 24 hours and get the results back and then, of course, wait and see if you’re positive or negative,” Martin Firestone, president of Travel Secure Inc., told CP24 Tuesday morning.
And if you test positive for COVID-19, you’ll have to go into self-isolation for 10 days from the date of your test result — even though Ontario’s self-isolation period after a positive test is five days.
The rules that go into effect today will not change the process for partially vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers. These individuals will continue to be required to take a test upon arrival in the country and on the eighth day of their mandatory 14-day quarantine.
It’s unclear how long random testing for COVID-19 will be conducted at Pearson, although a GTAA spokesperson told CTV News Toronto last week that the switch to off-site swabs is “helpful.” “This, along with increased CBSA staffing, has contributed to lower wait times for aircraft that need to be held upon arrival due to the high volume of passengers in the customs hall,” Tory Gass said in a statement at the time.
Despite the fact that random testing will no longer be done on-site, Firestone says it’s still a “major inconvenience” if you’re selected.
“No doubt many could reconsider their decision to come to Canada.” Not just the ArriveCan document that’s still there and a lot of people are not happy with it, add that to the mix now and you’ve just got another layer, another limitation that makes the journey that much more difficult when you decide to come here, he said.
Canadian officials have said mandatory random testing is key to detecting new variants coming into the country. And amid Ontario’s seventh wave of COVID-19, it doesn’t look like the measure will work anytime soon.
Meanwhile, a new Ipsos poll shows 70 percent of Canadians now believe the situation at airports across the country “is an embarrassment to Canada,” and nearly 60 percent of those polled are avoiding flying until they see improvements.
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