Operation Isolation 2.0

Thanks to the great work of Dr. Heather Morrison, Premier Dennis King and their teams, and of course, because of the diligence of Islanders to follow their directions, P.E.I. has seen no community spread of COVID-19. Yet with its first positive case in 12 days on April 28, from an international traveller, we are reminded how easily the virus can arrive on P.E.I.

Operation Isolation has already restricted the coming and goings of most people to the Island and is a big reason we are in this very enviable situation of no community spread and no hospitalization. Why don’t we take it up a notch and make the Island even more safe from the virus?

Let’s initiate Operation Isolation 2.0 (OI 2.0).

The only people coming to P.E.I. are returning residents, those travelling for medical or compassionate reasons, and essential workers. Residents, medical and compassionate travellers are all required to self-isolate for two weeks when arriving on P.E.I. and there are steps in place to monitor these people. OI 2.0 would increase the monitoring of these people so no one “accidentally” makes a trip to the grocery store or elsewhere and infects someone. This could include following travellers home, visits to their homes or name and address on a website of those arriving. There would be 150,000 people watching them then.

The next group to worry about are essential workers. We have truck drivers from the mainland arriving on P.E.I. and P.E.I. truckers making deliveries around North America.

We also have health-care workers, construction workers and perhaps others that are going back and forth from P.E.I. and the mainland.

The trucking companies bring food, medicine and all sorts of items necessary for life on P.E.I. and we have longhaul drivers that take P.E.I. goods to other parts of North America. All of these items are essential to our lives and economy and need to be delivered, but imagine for a second that our Island didn’t have a bridge or ferry service and all items had to leave and arrive by cargo ships. Trucks would deliver product to the port for delivery on P.E.I. and pick up P.E.I. product at the port for delivery to North America. No truck drivers would be exposed to COVID-19 by leaving the Island and no drivers would be coming to P.E.I. potentially bringing the coronavirus with them.

OI 2.0 would set up a port system like this in Borden. Trucks arrive in Borden with their product, trailer is unhitched and a local truck picks up product. P.E.I. product is taken to Borden, unhitched and a mainland driver makes the delivery to customers in North America. Seems easy enough, but I’m sure there are logistics to be worked out, but not impossible to do.

We also have to worry about the other essential workers travelling back and forth. We need to ask the hard question of how necessary are these workers? Can our health professionals here cover for those that travel? Can construction projects be delayed? What other travel is being done that could be handled by contracting workers in other provinces or workers here contracted to do what is necessary on P.E.I.?

As it stands now Prince Edward Island is being held hostage by these few people that need to travel back and forth.

We need to ask ourselves, is the travel of these few people worth 17,000+ kids not being in school, thousands of Islanders being out of work, bars, restaurants and hundreds of other small businesses being closed? Churches are closed, sports leagues are shut down, kids' summer camps are cancelled and we can’t visit with friends or hug our parents and grandparents, just because our Health Department and government have to bring us back to a new normal in phases due to the chance someone brings the virus to P.E.I.

As long as the virus is out there in other parts of the country and there is a chance it can come to P.E.I., we have to continue to do what Premier King and Dr. Morrison tell us in order to keep our community safe and follow the guidelines of Renew P.E.I.

Could Operation Isolation 2.0 get us to that level of safety health officials need to let P.E.I. get back to normal? We will never know if we don’t try and it certainly seems worth the effort.