Alberta is massively expanding COVID-19 testing. On Thursday, July 30, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's top doctor, and Health Minister Tyler Shandro announced that people will be able to get COVID-19 tests at Alberta pharmacies. But there are a couple of conditions for who can swing by their local drugstore to get tested.
At the time of writing, there are 93 pharmacies across Alberta offering COVID-19 testing.
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The health officials confirmed at Thursday's update that more pharmacies will be able to join the list in the coming weeks.
Dr. Hinshaw said that the government ran a test project in June to see whether testing at local pharmacies would be feasible.
"This project was a success. More than 10,000 people were safely tested at the pilot pharmacies in the last month," she said.
As a result, a whole bunch of other pharmacies will now be able to offer the same services.
But there are a couple of exceptions. "For the safety of yourself and others, only people with no symptoms and no known exposure to COVID-19 can be tested at a pharmacy," said the top doctor.
You can download the list of participating pharmacies from the Alberta Blue Cross. You will need to call the pharmacies beforehand to make an appointment if you want to get tested for COVID-19.
Above is a peek at some of the pharmacies included in the list. The full list has 93 entries.
Dr. Hinshaw said that any pharmacies can sign up to enroll in this program if they want but they'll have to go through a process to "ensure patient safety and efficient distribution of supplies."
Therefore, she's asking Albertans to be patient as more and more pharmacies begin the process of offering COVID-19 testing.
Each pharmacy will have its own process of signing up people for testing, so you will have to call them up to find out.
You are also encouraged to frequently check back on the Blue Cross website as more and more pharmacies get the green light to provide COVID-19 tests.
On Thursday's update, Dr. Hinshaw said that over 566,000 people in Alberta have gotten tested for the disease so far.
In total, there are 10,716 cases of COVID-19 as of Friday morning, July 31, and 195 people have died as a result of COVID-19 complications.