Premier Ford Calls Out Medical Officers for Lack of Testing

Tuesday, 5 May 2020 14:18

Premier Doug Ford says about half of the medical officers in the Province are not testing enough and need to do a better job. He also said the Province will be extending the 24/7 lowest hydro rates.

ONTARIO - The Premier of Ontario is not happy with the amount of testing being done across the Province.

Today only 10,000 tests were done, two days after setting a record high of 17,000 on Sunday. Doug Ford says he is very discouraged by the amount of tests that are being done and is going to having some frank discussions with Medical Officers of Health.

"We have certain Medical Officers, in certain jurisdictions, now keep in mind, we have 34 medical officers across the Province, some just aren't performing, I'm calling them out right now, you need to pick up the pace. When you have half of them exceeding expectations and then you have some others, who are not putting the work in, as far as I can see, so we need to hold these people accountable."

Ford says when this whole mess is over, we are going to need to review our medical system and maybe look at the Alberta model.

"It is a lot easier to have one person in control than 34 people in control. I will tell you right now, I am disappointed in the Chief Medical Officers in certain regions, I'm not going to name them, they know who they are. I don't know what the big problem is with them testing, it is frustrating as anything, sorry but it is frustrating, they need to pick it up, it's as simple of that. We will be speaking to them in the next day or two and find out the reason they are not testing to the capacity they should be testing."

Ford says we need to see more testing done.

"We have been seeing the testing ramp up on all long term care and we need every single long term care patient and frontline health care worker tested. I just don't know how much more complicated that can be, go out there and start testing and start working on retirement homes and the workers there and start working on health care workers, these people are smart people, just keep testing. Don't get me wrong some of these Medical Officers are knocking it out of the park but about half them aren't."

The Premier also said that giving people around the clock access to the lowest hydro rates is going to be extended and more details on that will be coming down the pipe soon. The lowest hydro rates were supposed to end later this week. Ford also said we are going to have some good news coming later this week in terms of people being able to go outside and enjoying the fresh air. Stay tuned for more announcements later this week.