Alberta Health Minister lists Canada Post Calgary as COVID-19 outbreak site

As of writing, six cases were recorded and were linked to the said Canada Post facility located near the airport, at 1100 49th Ave. N.E. (File Photo: By Raysonho/Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health. Dr. Deena Hinshaw declared Canada Post Calgary as one of the sites of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in a press conference on May 8.

For a worksite outbreak to be officially declared, there needs to at least five cases in that place. As of writing, six cases were recorded and were linked to the said Canada Post facility located near the airport, at 1100 49th Ave. N.E.

“What happens in any kind of worksite outbreak is that the cases are identified and they’re asked questions about when they started to have symptoms, and then the contact tracers determine what the time frame was where they could have passed that infection to others,” she explained.

Hinshaw added that anyone who had close contact with the infected individuals was mandated to be under self-isolation in their respective homes for 14 days from that point of the last contact

In an interview with Global News, Canada Post said that the staff who tested positive for the virus are believed to have gotten it from other places outside and not the workplace. The employees are not related to each other and were asymptomatic while reporting for work.

It also noted that some of the infected staff were not in the facility since early April. The most recent case has not been in the processing plant since May 5. It added that the cases occurred in separate times over three weeks.

Canada Post implemented different measures in line with the safety protocols against COVID-19 such as two meters of physical distancing for delivery jobs and thorough cleaning.