The Government of Saskatchewan announced Thursday that they will be expanding rapid COVID-19 testing options for asymptomatic people in the province.

According to the release, Saskatchewan has developed a plan to deploy more than 700,000 rapid tests which they received through a federal government allocation. The test is simple, safe, and can be used in a wide variety of settings such as walk-in or drive-thru sites, mobile testing sites, and pop-up testing sites.

The Ministry of Health will also be working with SaskBuilds and Procurement to develop a Request for Pre-Qualifications tender for third-party providers, which will ensure the rapid tests can be delivered and properly administered at long-term and personal care homes, shelters, detox facilities, group homes, and schools. Tests will also be available for emergency service providers such as ambulance, police, and fire, and participating pharmacies and dental offices.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority is also looking into pop-up point-of-care testing sites, and the ability for healthcare workers to perform weekly surveillance testing on themselves. Training and support will be provided by the Ministry of Health and Saskatchewan Health Authority.

Because of this, an amendment was made to the Medical Laboratory Licensing Regulations in order to exempt point-of-care COVID-19 specimen collection and testing sites from requiring a laboratory license once they have entered into an agreement with the SHA.

"These changes give us the ability to move swiftly to expand testing options. We know that testing plays a crucial role in helping to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus and now with variants of concern surfacing in our province it is more important than ever that testing is expanded to make it easier, quicker, and more convenient to access," said Health Minister Paul Merriman.

Any rapid point-of-care tests that come back positive will be required to be retested at an SHA lab using a PCR test in order to confirm the result. All negative results however do not need to be retested.