B.C.’s top doctor says there are a number of rapid COVID-19 tests currently in the works, which she says can help especially across the Interior and Northern Health Authorities.

Dr. Bonnie Henry says a new rapid test developed by Spartan Bioscience in Ottawa is similar to a test developed by the BC Centre for Disease Control.

“But the tests that are done at the BC CDC need to be in a lab and that’s why it took us some time to roll out those tests,” she said on Tuesday. “We now have seven other accredited labs around the province, including LifeLabs. That has been helpful in terms of LifeLabs having the transportation network and the laboratory network.”

Henry says there are other testing platforms available that the province is currently using to test for the novel coronavirus.

“[That includes] ones that run on a platform called GeneXpert and we have those GeneXperts in B.C.,” noted Henry.

She says the province hasn’t written out the Spartan test, noting its just a matter of time.

“Its nice because its all self-contained, but it is a very similar type of test [to what we have] so if and when it becomes available to us, we’re looking at where it could be deployed to supplement the testing that is ongoing now,” added Henry.

“My understanding is they wouldn’t be available to us till some time a few months from now anyway, so it is absolutely part of our whole plan of looking at how we can scale up testing, but we are currently focused on ones that we have in province at the moment.”

As of April 14th, the province has completed 58,626 tests for COVID-19. There have been 1,517 confirmed cases in the province, the majority in the Lower Mainland.