Major delivery of rapid tests on the way to Quebec pharmacies for Wednesday

Quebecers who have been striking out on getting rapid tests at their local pharmacies may find their luck changing Wednesday.

Three-quarters of a million tests are on their way to pharmacies now, the provincial health ministry announced Tuesday afternoon.

"Today, 758,160 additional rapid screening tests are being delivered to wholesalers and will be sent to our pharmacies in Quebec as of tomorrow," the ministry wrote on Twitter.

Long lineups on Monday to snag the much-in-demand free rapid tests largely dried up by Tuesday, with many pharmacies immediately out of stock.

Each Quebecer over the age of 14 is eligible for a kit of five free rapid tests per month with their health cards.

The province said last week that, in total, it planned to distribute 10 million tests this way by the end of March, if supply allowed.

But it hasn't provided a more detailed delivery schedule, except for telling media that it would begin with 4.3 million tests to pharmacies (a smaller amount is going directly to care homes for the elderly).

The shipments are from the federal government, which publishes its supply and distribution numbers online, though currently those numbers are out of date, with the most recent update on Dec. 10.

As of that date, Ottawa said that throughout the pandemic, it had procured nearly 15 million rapid tests that were earmarked for Quebec, and that it had already sent about half of those to the province.

Those tests did not make their way quickly to the public, at least until now. Of those 7.5 million already sent to Quebec, only half a million had been marked as distributed to the population as of Dec. 10.

SWITCH TO AT-HOME TESTS MAKES DATA UNRELIABLE: INSPQ

As people switch to much more frequent home testing, the province's official testing numbers will become less and less reliable, Quebec's public health institute, the INSPQ, warned this week.

That's because so many more tests will be happening off the official grid, never reported to health authorities. Testing sites are booked nearly solid, and many people have reported simply deciding to self-isolate after a positive home test, without the extra verification of a PCR test done at a clinic.

"As of December 20, the introduction of rapid tests in the community will affect metrics on the number of admissible tests, the positivity rate and the number of confirmed cases," the INSPQ wrote in a note above its daily statistical report.

"These results must henceforth be interpreted with caution."