According to the survey released on Thursday, 39 percent of participants aged 15 and over reported at least one incident where they wanted a quick COVID-19 test for themselves or a child at home, but could not. .
In late 2021, the most contagious Omicron variant was first reported in Canada and spread rapidly across provinces and territories.  The sudden rise in COVID-19 cases has weighed heavily on PCR testing, increasing demand for faster antigen tests that Canadians could do on their own.
Using a crowdsource online questionnaire conducted from February 21 to March 13, 2022, StatCan asked participants a series of questions about their experiences with COVID-19 testing between December 1, 2021 and the date the questionnaire was completed.
StatCan reported that difficulties in accessing rapid tests vary across the country, ranging from 7 percent in Saskatchewan to 50 percent for those in British Columbia.
Of the 36,857 Canadians surveyed who wanted a quick test but could not do it, 60% said the tests were not available when they tried.  In addition, 25 percent of these participants said they never decided to do so, as they assumed no tests were available.
Other reasons Canadians said they had difficulty accessing quick tests include not knowing where to go for an exam (21 percent), the exams available were very expensive (22 percent) and the waiting time for an exam or appointment was too big (18 percent).
The results of the StatCan survey add to the recent challenges posed by experts in determining the current extent of COVID-19 spread in communities, as provinces limit testing and change other means of monitoring the virus, such as wastewater analysis.
StatCan says that most of those who reported having difficulty accessing rapid tests reported that the problem occurred in December 2021 (64 percent) or January 2022 (61), while only 26 percent of respondents reported that faced these difficulties in February or March 2022.
According to StatCan, this may indicate that there have been fewer barriers to accessing rapid tests in recent months.
While the difficulty of taking quick tests was similar between households with children and those without, StatCan found that test supply issues differed when considering the age of a family’s children.
The survey reports that 43 percent of participants living with a child under the age of five said they could not take a quick test.  Among those living with children aged five to 11, 33 percent had the same problem, and 37 percent of participants living with children aged 12 to 17 reported this barrier to access.
StatCan says households with school-age children may have had fewer difficulties in obtaining rapid tests for COVID-19 because many schools provided test kits to students.
In addition, the survey found that a larger proportion of key employees reported difficulty accessing quick exams (42%) compared to those participants who did not work in key jobs (37%).
Respondents who reported having a disability were also found to have increased difficulty in obtaining prompt examinations.
According to Health Canada, the federal government has deployed more than 94,000,000 rapid tests across the country to inpatient care facilities.  However, as of March 25, only 15,302,116 rapid tests have been performed.
Among respondents, StatCan reports that 55 percent used a quick test between December 2021 and the data collection date.