Health unit calls in help as COVID-19 cases continue

Essex County’s public health unit is calling in reinforcements as COVID-19 continues to ravage the agricultural farm sector with nearly 200 new cases in three days.

Dr. Wajid Ahmed, the medical officer of health, said the region tallied its second highest daily increase on Monday with a total of 88 confirmed new cases. He said 87 of those are in the agricultural farm sector.

That count comes on the heels of a record high spike on Sunday with 98 additional cases, including 96 among temporary farm workers.

“What we are dealing with is absolutely unprecedented,” Ahmed said Monday during a daily briefing from the Windsor-essex County Health Unit. “Nobody was expecting this high number.”

Of the 20 new Essex County cases confirmed Saturday, 13 were migrant farm workers.

Health unit CEO Theresa Marentette said Monday that Essex County has had 1,580 confirmed COVID-19 cases. She said 864 of the case are resolved.

There have been 68 deaths in Essex County, including 49 people in retirement and long-term care homes and two migrant farm workers. A third temporary worker from a farm near Simcoe in the Haldimand-norfolk region has also died from COVID-19.

The health unit previously said there are six workplaces in Essex County’s agricultural sector with outbreaks. Four of those are in Leamington. Two are in Kingsville.

Ahmed said the health unit has not fined any of the farms, but the Ministry of Labour is conducting some investigations.

All of the nearly 200 new migrant worker cases over the last couple days were at one farm, he said.

Ahmed would not reveal which farm it is, stating the health unit has not determined if the outbreak poses a risk to the community.

“We’ll have to assess the risk to the community and if there’s a risk to the community based on the farm we will do that,” Ahmed said. “But at this point we’re just collecting information to get a better handle and then report accordingly.”

Ahmed said virtually all of the Covid-19-positive farm workers reported no symptoms at the time of testing.

The health unit will re-test the cases to rule out any possible false positives, he said. Teams were also heading out Monday to do in-person interviews and health assessments.

“Once it’s in the farm, basically the likelihood of everyone contracting it is much higher,” Ahmed said. “Based on that, we need to put really strong control measures in place in each of these farms to prevent it from spreading.”

He said there is a worry that some workers had been out in the community carrying the virus before testing positive.

“It is a heightened concern from everyone at this point,” Ahmed said. “Many of these farms have different living arrangements for their workers. A lot of these workers are on the farm properties. Their accommodations are right there. Then there are workers that are also living out in the community.”

He said the health unit has called in help to handle the farm outbreaks.

Containing the pandemic is a “monumental task” and would be “unmanageable by any single agency or any other public health unit,” he said.

Ahmed said at least three members of the Middlesex-london

Health Unit are already on the ground here, including Dr. Alex Summers, that region’s associate medical officer of health

“The call has gone out to other health units as well and we have at least 10 more staff that we know from different health units will be supporting us,” Ahmed said. “The ministry is also providing us with more support. So hopefully a combination of all of that would help us manage in the short term.”

Ahmed said the extra people will be helping manage cases on the farms. That will include doing interviews with workers who have COVID-19, assessing if they are still active cases and whether they are infectious or symptomatic.

“Part of that is expanding the circle to link all these cases to the exposure, where these exposures are happening, whether at the accommodation or the workplace, and how all these cases are linked,” Ahmed said. “It does require a little bit deeper analysis of everything that is happening. All the support that we are getting would be focused and dedicated to the case and contact management of all these additional workers.”