Whitehorse clinic offering COVID-19 testing for travel, work

A private downtown Whitehorse clinic is offering COVID-19 testing services for people travelling, who need it for work or who just want "peace of mind."

Hummingbird Mobile Health, which has provided occupational health screenings for the past six years, added COVID-19 testing to its roster in October after seeing a local demand from people who needed test results for either work or travel, chief nursing officer Mieke Leonard told CBC.

Companies across the country, including in other parts of the North, have been offering private COVID-19 testing for awhile now, Leonard noted.

"I think it was just time that we actually provided that service here in the Yukon as well," she said.

The clinic is offering two different kinds of tests, for about $285 each before tax a nasal swab or saliva sample that then goes to a lab down south, or a RT-PCR test, which requires a nasal swab but can provide same-day results that can then be verified by a lab if needed.

Leonard said Hummingbird is focusing on "asymptomatic folks" who, for example, are travelling to a country where they need to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test, or people working at mines.

"Our publicly-funded health care system is managing symptomatic clients right now if people want a peace-of-mind kind of test should that go through a publicly-funded health care system or should it be sought out by other means?" she asked.

"We chose to take that step to allow it to be offered by other means."

Hummingbird has tested more than 25 people so far, according to Leonard, and all the results have been negative.

She added thatin light of Yukon beginning to roll out the Moderna vaccine, she advocates for people to consider getting vaccinated.

"The way I look at it is, vaccines (and) practicing Safe Six, wearing masks, all of these things are just the tools in our toolkit to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic," Leonard said.

"So the more we can integrate innovation, technology, start looking at ways of how we can manage this, then hopefully we can get to a point where we can conquer it."