Alberta health officials opened up COVID-19 testing to asymptomatic Albertans last weekend.

COVID-19 has proved to be a deadly virus and has the greatest impact on older age groups. However, some people who contract the virus don’t experience any symptoms and don’t even realize they are carrying it and/or spreading it.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw spoke about the asymptomatic testing during an update on Wednesday. She said the first results won’t be ready until early next week, but based on the number of tests completed in the past 24 hours that many people are taking advantage of the province's testing.

"So, for example, [Wednesday] we came close to 5,000 tests (4,997) processed the last 24 hours and yet have only 19 new cases,” she explained.

“This is helping us again to confirm what we understand to be true that the majority of the province has very few active cases and really encourage all Albertans to participate in this active population test whether or not they have symptoms to help us get further confirmation of that."

On Wednesday Alberta Health Services opened drop-in testing centres in Edmonton and Calgary for residents in those cities.

For people in Cochrane/Airdrie who are asymptomatic wanting to be tested, it’s a bit more of a process. Residents will need to go online (click here for the website) fill out the self-assessment and say yes to asymptomatic testing. They’ll then be able to book a time and location for the test.

AHS released a tutorial video on how the process works, how the test is done, and what to expect if you are going to get tested.