COVID-19 sickens 60 at Pioneer Flower Farms
40 new cases confirmed Wednesday, all connected to greenhouse outbreak
A St. Catharines greenhouse has become the site of the single largest jump in local COVID-19 cases since the pandemic hit Niagara in March.
The public health department reported 40 new cases Wednesday, all of which are connected to the novel coronavirus outbreak at Pioneer Flower Farms on Seventh Street.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji said 39 of the cases are Pioneer employees, and one of them is a person who has close contact with them. He said there were 20 previously identified cases — 17 on Sunday and three in the prior week — bringing the to- tal number of cases at the farm to 60.
That number is roughly half of Pioneer’s migrant workforce.
Only the Royal Rose Place long-term-care home in Welland, which has had a total of 119 cases during a two-month-long outbreak, has had a larger COVID-19 problem.
Hirji said the health department is doing more contact tracing to determine if anyone outside the farm is at risk. He said some people who had contact with the workers are in isolation as a precaution.
“For now, it appears this is
confined to the farm. We have not detected cases connected to this outbreak outside the farm yet.”
Department staff are moving workers around in their living quarters so sick people are living together.
The farm notified public health of the outbreak Sunday evening with a Facebook post. The post said a worker began showing symptoms two weeks prior and was isolated. But later that week two other workers also became ill and later tested positive for the virus.
Hirji said due to the close living and working quarters, the health department had most employees tested.
It is not clear where the first employee may have been exposed, but Hirji said it was like somewhere in the broader Niagara community.
Public health investigators have determined workers were not using masks or gloves prior to the outbreak. Hirji said the farm has since been ordered to ensure safety equipment is used by remaining workers.
“We have had people on site every day and they have observed that the employees are now masking,” said Hirji.
He said the greenhouse is a confined space and there are multiple people working inside at any given time.
A Pioneer spokesperson did not immediately respond to interview requests Wednesday.
While Pioneer’s outbreak has produced the region’s largest number of cases in a single day, Hirji said the spread of the virus in broader Niagara community so far remains low.
All of Wednesday’s cases were connected to the outbreak, and there were no new cases at all on Tuesday — mirroring a pattern of single-digit daily cases over recent weeks.
While Hirji said the risk of increased community spread as a result of the Pioneer farm outbreak remains low, the sheer number of cases does create a “heightened worry” about COVID-19 spread.
He said the speed with which the virus infected a large group of people demonstrates how easily it can spread. It reinforces the need for people with even one mild symptom related to COVID-19 to self-isolate and arrange for a test.
Niagara Health reported Wednesday it continues to see a marked increase in people coming forward for COVID-19 tests since the provincial government allowed people to selfrefer to a testing centre.
Previously, the hospital system was doing about 130 tests a day. On Wednesday, it reported it is now testing more than 300 daily.
Some 2,100 tests have been completed by Niagara Health assessment centres from May 25 to June, with 1,400 of them being self-referred people and walk-ins.
Increased testing has not yielded a rise in the percentage of people infected. Of the 14,033 people tested by Niagara Health to date, 451, or 3.21 per cent, tested positive. That is slightly below the provincial figure of 3.79 per cent.
In total, Niagara has registered 706 COVID-19 cases, with 86 of them active. At least 60 residents with the virus have died.