The Canadian government plans to stop supplying provinces and territories with free COVID-19 rapid tests, which has an infection control epidemiologist worried about two-tiered health care, increased spread and increased health-care costs.

“The federal government continues to support Canada’s rapid testing needs while the federal inventory remains,” Health Canada spokesperson Nicholas Janveau told CBC News.

“That said, rapid test programming was and continues to be a provincial/territorial responsibility.”

Ottawa currently has about 70 million of the tests, which people can use at home to screen for the virus. About 3.6 million of these have already expired and are ineligible for distribution.

The tests usually come in boxes of five, which would mean an inventory of just over 13 million test kits.