COVID-19 outbreaks on two Simcoe County farms have been attributed to the increase of local cases during the past week following five weeks of declining numbers.
“We’ve got two farm outbreaks, both of them in Simcoe County,” said Simcoe-Muskoka medical officer of health Dr. Charles Gardner, who categorized this latest local development as “a dangerous situation."
Gardner did confirm some positive tests include migrant farm workers, although of the eight that have been identified as living out of the Simcoe-Muskoka jurisdiction, it wasn’t clear how many of those are temporary foreign workers.
One of the outbreaks involves nine people on one farm. Of the nine, two live in Simcoe County and seven are from out of this jurisdiction.
“We are conducting an investigation. We have been there on site,” said Gardner.
Community, home care as well as paramedicine staff have been to the farms to conduct swab tests onsite. So far, there have been 42 negative results.
The second farm was first identified on June 14 and then declared an outbreak on Tuesday with three people testing positive, one originating from another jurisdiction.
Health unit staff members are now investigating the farm and testing other staff members.
While Gardner wouldn’t identify the farms or their locations, he did say both employ fewer than 100 workers.
“I am concerned about farm outbreaks here given the experience elsewhere in the province,” said Gardner, who said he has been in contact with the medical officer of health in Windsor-Essex.
A large migrant worker population in that area has fallen ill with COVID-19, and two relatively young men who have died.
Gardner said that many who work in the farming sector can be quite vulnerable to this infection, and he’s concerned that those conditions could lead to many more cases.
“I am well aware of the large number of farms that have been affected, the large number of farm workers that have been infected” in southern Ontario, he said. “Therefore it is a dangerous situation that we have to manage diligently and carefully.”
Gardner said health unit staff are looking into whether workers on the affected farms also work on other farms, creating the potential for it to spread. And although that is a possibility, Gardner said the health unit doesn’t yet have evidence of that happening.
He did say last week that workplaces, including farms, are key areas officials are watching closely, particularly as more businesses open up as society begins to emerge from the pandemic.
“I’ve been concerned about that (farm outbreaks), too, because that happened in a very large way in Windsor-Essex and Haldimand-Norfolk. To me, it’s part of the risks inherent with workplaces and how careful businesses and farm operators should be for infection control and how diligent we need to be at the health unit to support them,” he said.
