TRAVEL NEWS – Today, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), operators of Toronto Pearson, announced a robust new COVID-19 PCR and antigen testing research program at Toronto Pearson.

Testing starts on March 1, supported in part by funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). The research is designed to explore the efficacy of antigen testing, compared with the rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, in a high-throughput, commercial environment, as well as to explore how to operationalize rapid PCR testing in an airport environment.

Similar to the GTAA’s co-sponsoring of the McMaster Health Labs International Border Study in Fall 2020, this the next step in the GTAA’s efforts to support the government by offering new science and data that can contribute to a longer-term testing and recovery framework.

This research program will lead to the creation of a new point-of-need testing capacity at the airport, as well as laboratory capacity to process these tests. The GTAA will lead a team of Canadian healthcare companies to run multiple research studies at Toronto Pearson, which will make free COVID-19 tests available to all airport employees, as well as testing for eligible departing passengers on select routes who are willing to volunteer as participants.

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