On-demand STI testing now available at Cowichan hospital<\/p>\n
Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, June 23, 2026<\/p>\n
Island Health has announced that on-demand testing for sexually transmitted infections is now available at Cowichan District Hospital.<\/p>\n
Clients can be tested for chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomoniasis, syphilis, and HIV by booking an appointment online <\/a> or dropping in at the lab as no appointment is needed.<\/p>\n A nurse will contact patients should the results be positive or uncertain and those who test negative won\u2019t be contacted. Patients can also call their regular health-care provider or access most results via the MyHealth<\/a> or Health Gateway<\/a> services online.<\/p>\n \u201cOn-demand testing can be used as part of a regular STI checkup practice,\u201d according to Island Health. \u201cTesting is recommended every three to six months, especially when people have new or casual partners, or if they have had a change in sexual activities.\u201d<\/p>\n Those with active STI symptoms, who have recently had sexual contact with someone who tested positive for an STI, those who want to access HIV Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) medication, or those who want to speak with a nurse or doctor should see a nurse or doctor at a clinic instead of using the drop-in testing service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On-demand STI testing now available at Cowichan hospital Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, June 23, 2026 Island Health has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-759207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}