Organizing a return to work measure for your employees during COVID-19 can be complex, as complying with regulations mandated by your province, and can often involve making decisions involving long-term, extensive preparation and regular communications with your managers’ team members. For employees, complying with COVID-19 regulations and adhering to employment demands based on their industry can also lead to complicated struggles for their health and safety. At Up Clinics, we hope to establish your strategies by providing COVID-19 testing and risk assessments for your workplace to help keep your employees as healthy as possible during the pandemic.
Our Disclaimer at Up Clinics
Please be advised that negative results are based on whether the employee had an active COVID-19 infection during the date of the test, and that negative results do not guarantee the employee doesn’t have or will not develop a COVID-19 infection. Asymptomatic COVID-19 testing shouldn’t be construed as ongoing disease management and shouldn’t take the place of regular consultation with the employee’s primary care provider.
The foundation of a proper public health response to COVID-19 comes down to establishing an effective strategy, placing preamble guidelines for removing avenues of transmission, and encouraging testing wherever appropriate. At Up Clinics, we encourage you to follow the official CDC Guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and follow safety regulations regarding how to prevent its spread for you and your employees.
COVID-19 Testing at Up Clinics
Return to work testing is the next step to ensure you and your employees remain safe during this time. To begin establishing COVID-19 testing either at our clinic or at your facility, please contact our clinic to begin scheduling appointments. Before COVID-19 testing, we request that you require employees to complete a COVID-19 testing authorization form before receiving testing, alongside any other standard employer authorization forms for physical examinations and drug screenings.
Our teams will work with you to help your employees through the testing process by providing at-clinic testing. Under health and safety regulations, our clinic can perform these tests:
- Lab-based PCR: Widely used to diagnose COVID-19 infections, the test can detect genetic materials from the virus from patient samples, typically by swabbing the back of the nose. Other collection methods, including throat swabs, nose swabs, saliva swabs, gargle rinses, and respiratory secretion tests, can be implemented. False positives with this test are extremely rare and provide an accurate estimate.
- PoC nucleic acid testing: Point-of-care tests detect the COVID-19 nucleic acids, used to identify individuals in community and work settings within the highest levels of spread, and provide immediate but less accurate results in timely action.
- PoC antigen tests (RATs): Like the nucleic acid test, the point-of-care antigen tests detect COVID-19 antigens or viral proteins and produce rapid results within an hour. Primarily using the nasal swab or nasal swab at the back of the nose, these tests are less sensitive and thus less accurate in detection.
Once testing results are received, our teams will inform you about the employee’s results, and it’s the employee’s responsibility to report the results to you. We may experience longer-than-normal turnaround times for testing results.