COVID-19 are now in the hands of provincial health authorities but many jurisdictions are still evaluating how the devices might help battle the coronavirus pandemic.Health Canada has approved more than three dozen different tests for COVID-19, but only six of them are “point-of-care” versions more commonly referred to as rapid tests.
Canada closes in on 5K daily coronavirus cases as officials sound alarms The “gold-standard” COVID-19 tests need to be processed in a lab, and usually take at least a day to provide results.
Rapid tests can be processed in the same place a patient is tested, sometimes in as few as 15 minutes, but they are generally considered less reliable than lab results.There are two different kinds of rapid tests.