Norfolk farmer grappling with outbreak promises random testing

The farmer at the centre of a major COVID-19 outbreak in Norfolk County has promised to step up testing in his bunkhouses and has called on other farms to follow suit.

Scotlynn Group in Vittoria — a multinational produce grower — has lost most of its workforce and much of its 450-acre asparagus crop to the virus.

The health unit says 164 of Scotlynn’s 216 Mexican migrant workers have COVID-19. Seven workers were being treated at Norfolk General Hospital in Simcoe as of Tuesday night, with two in the intensive care unit.

In a statement, Scotlynn president and CEO Scott Biddle said the company will work with the health unit to “implement weekly random COVID-19 surveillance testing” at its bunkhouses.

“We are requesting that process to become mandatory across Haldimand-Norfolk to ensure our community, businesses and neighbours do not have to endure a repeat of our situation,” Biddle said.

Scotlynn’s migrant workers spent their first two weeks in Canada inside hotel rooms paid for by the company as they waited out their mandatory quarantine period. Now 105 workers are back at hotels, this time in Brantford, to serve another quarantine period as part of a solution worked out between the Brant County and Haldimand-Norfolk health units. Another 111 workers are quarantining at the farm. “The workers are either asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic. The process involving area hotels is one that BCHU has already successfully overseen in our jurisdiction,” Dr. Elizabeth Urbantke, Brant County’s acting medical officer of health, told reporters on Tuesday.

She said the workers will not have any contact with hotel staff, who have been instructed on how to safely deliver food and discard of linens and garbage from the workers’ rooms. All rooms will be “professionally disinfected” after the quarantine period ends, Urbantke added.

“Both health units will continue to monitor the situation on a daily basis. The safety of our community is our highest priority,” she said.

Having so many new COVID-19 cases in their community didn’t sit well with some Brantford-area politicians, who didn’t appreciate being kept out of the loop.

Brantford-Brant MPP Will Bouma said he was “deeply troubled” that no information about the hotel plan reached the city or his office prior to the workers moving north.

“No consultations were offered outside of the respective health units,” Bouma said.

Brantford Mayor Kevin Davis said in a statement on Tuesday that he was concerned about his citizens being at increased risk.

“Let me be clear in saying that this is in no way the fault or responsibility of the labourers who come to this province and work hard to provide for themselves and their families,” Davis said.

Davis said he would ask the province to investigate “why it was that we are dealing with the consequences of a farm outbreak outside our community.” The Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit confirmed that most of the COVID-positive workers are asymptomatic. Of the 217 test results received so far, 53 have come back negative. J.P. Antonacci’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows him to report on stories about the regions of Haldimand and Norfolk.