COVID-19 negative test confirmations delayed up to 2 weeks as hotline swamped by 10,000 calls a day

A hotline set up for people to confirm negative COVID-19 test results keeps hanging up on people.

The Provincial Health Services Authority of B.C. says the phone number is getting more than 10,000 calls per day and that's causing delays of up to two weeks or more.

"The Hotline is working on a new contact centre environment to help alleviate call volumes by putting callers into a queue or offering a callback option. In the meantime, we appreciate everyone's patience," Jos Vargas of PHSAmedia relations wrote to CBC on Monday.

Michael Armstrong experienced the problem firsthand.

"I could never get through that line. It just hangs up on you," he said.

Armstrong said he first got tested for COVID-19 after waiting in line for more than an hour on Sept. 23. The negative results came two days later by text.

But then he began to feel worse. Concerned the first test may have been a false-negative, he returned and got retested on Sept. 27.

Then he waited for more thantwo weeks with no word. No text. No luck getting through the hotline, despite multiple tries. So he signed up for E-Health using a different number butended up getting a dial tone again.

On Oct. 11, he drove to a drive-thru testing site and waited in line. Once it was his turn for a COVID test, he said he didn't want a test, just the result of the last test.

He said, after a bit of back-and-forth, he was told by the head nurse that his last test for COVID-19 was negative.

As of Monday, he still hadn't received anofficialtext of his test result.

Armstrong said he works from home so the wait wasn't a panic, but he can only imagine how urgent this would be for a person who is relying on a test to return to work.

Armstrong says he expects hiccups given that it's an ongoing pandemic, but said,"It's been terribly frustrating."

Despite the backlog in negative test confirmations, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said at the beginning of October that people who tested positive could expect to receive their results within 24 hours.