New cases of COVID-19 spike among migrant workers, says health unit

The number of cases of the novel coronavirus in Windsor-essex has jumped by 21 patients — 13 of whom are migrant workers, says the health unit.

Dr. Wajid Ahmed said Thursday morning that the Windsor-essex County Health Unit is currently working with several employers.

“A lot of them are contacts of the initial cases, who are already self-isolating,” Ahmed said.

“We are working with all of them to get a better handle of who else might be at risk.”

The latest additions bring the region’s total COVID-19 case count to 826.

The spike of 21 cases follows several days of the health unit reporting around 10 new cases daily.

Ahmed said he is concerned to see a sudden rise, and the health unit is investigating.

“In the community, if we continue to see a pattern, maybe we need to have a conversation again about going in the right direction ... maybe putting more control measures in place to avoid these types of mini-surges,” Ahmed said.

However, Ahmed added that he considers the region’s migrant workers to be “a very restricted population.”

No new deaths were announced on Thursday. To date, 63 people in Windsor-essex have died due to the novel coronavirus. The number of resolved cases is now 465.

There are 21 COVID -19 patients in the region who currently require hospital care.

At least 14,728 people in Windsor-essex have been tested, with 956 test results still pending.

Meanwhile, Chatham-kent’s medical officer of health addressed the issue of migrant workers, explaining that their group quarters can be nice places to live but not during a pandemic.

Dr. David Colby was talking about Greenhill Produce — the hard-hit Kent Bridge greenhouse facility with more than 100 cases of COVID -19 — where nearly all of those cases involve migrant workers living in bunkhouses.

The virus spread quickly through those shared bunkhouses, not in the greenhouses, Colby said.

“They are not crowded and they are not squalid in any way,” he said about the lodgings. “They meet all applicable standards for worker housing. They are inspected every year and they’re actually quite nice, but they were not designed to prevent spread of a pandemic.

Five more cases were reported Wednesday at Greenhill, pushing the workplace’s total to 101 after one was reported in the morning. At least 52 have recovered.

That total doesn’t include 14 workers from Essex County who also tested positive but don’t live in Chatham-kent, he said.

— With files from Postmedia News