Vaccines for most children are only a few weeks away, and school outbreaks are increasingly quickly in many parts of North America.  Rapid tests, which are cheap, and can give you a result in minutes, are a critical tool to keep our kid safe until they can be safely vaccinated.   They can keep schools open and prevent a disruption to our children's education.

Many jurisdictions have used Rapid Tests with great success, grassroots groups have popped up across the country to encourage testing, such as ebcat and StaySafe.  They are easy to use, and screenings have kept the professional sports and film industries operating throughout the pandemic. 

We discuss details on how you can implement a rapid testing program in this presention and in this Twitter thread.  Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax led a program that successfully crushed outbreaks in her city, and talks about it here.  Dr. Victor Leung used it to stop outbreaks in Long Term Care homes.  You can use them to screen sick family members and limit your contacts.  Many countries are providing them free to citizens. In short, they are a marvelous technology that everyone should have easy access to.

What Needs to Happen

Our governments need to:
1) Get enough tests to test every schoolchild 2-3X per week until January
2) Redirect tests for businesses to use in schools
3) Grassroots organization: let volunteer groups help, they are more than enough willing people out there.  It's easy to train people to do the tests as well.

Why is it important to do this? 

Covid risk is less deadly in kids, but risk is still significant. 
1) 1/50 can get Long Covid - symptoms including fatigue, learning difficulties, breathing problems.  These could be lifelong problems, no one knows yet.  That's 1 in every 2 classrooms.
2) Nearly 1/100 are being hospitalized, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics
3) 1/43 adolescents who get Covid can get Myocarditis (heart inflammation) - roughly 100X more than with the vaccine.
4) 1/3000 risk of MIS-C - a serious inflammatory disease that requires ICU care with a high mortality rate

Please sign our petition and encourage your local officials to move quickly on this issue!

Some informational articles with more background on the tests. Sadly many are from last year and no one listened... many lives could have been saved.  Let's hope things will be different this time: 

NYTimes:  Rapid Tests Are the Answer to Living With Covid-19
Time: How We Can Stop the Spread of COVID-19 By Christmas
WSJ: How Accurate Are Covid-19 Rapid Home Tests, and When Should You Use Them?
Toronto Star: Rapid paper-strip tests could help control COVID-19 this fall
TWIV: Test often, fast turnaround, with Michael Mina