The Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science has serious concerns about what they see as inadequacies across Canada’s medical laboratory network. While many of these challenges were significant issues before the pandemic, the Society says COVID-19 has exacerbated the human resources shortages and highlighted the gaps in infrastructure.

 Prior to COVID-19, Canada’s labs were processing over 440 million tests a year. The addition of hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests daily, as well as the growing number of other tests coupled with an aging population, are increasing the demands on the system.

 Christine Nielsen, CEO of the Society says, “Over the coming years, about half of all MLTs in Canada will be eligible to retire, and there is no coordinated plan in place by Federal and Provincial governments to address this issue.” She says they are seeing these shortages in many regions already.