If there is one piece of advice that Glenn Pohl would like to tell other business owners and that is one of the most important things you can have when it comes to COVID-19 is you need to have a good plan how to effectively deal with the virus if it happens to hit your workplace.
Pohl, who is general manager at Xpert Rail Consulting, said his firm has been going through what is classified as an ‘outbreak’ by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) but the firm’s well-crafted response plan to COVID-19, as well as caring about their workers stopped the virus before it had a major spread.
The outbreak started when six workers in a larger shop in Filmore had a safety meeting 11 days ago and three of the attendees ended up sick.
“The safety meeting was in a large building with plenty of room for social distancing,” he said.
Despite the precautions the next day attendees started coming down with flu-like symptoms.
“There is not a lot of flu-like symptoms going around so we did not want to take a chance and told our employees ‘take the weekend and isolate’ by the Saturday three out of the six were sick,” he said.
“This is the scary part they caught COVID on a Thursday and by Saturday evening they were really sick…it was a quick moving situation and we immediately told people to go into isolation,” he said. “Stay at home and try to distance from your families.”
After the initial shock of people becoming sick there was isolation and testing of any staff who may have been in any sort of proximity with people who had fallen ill.
Pohl said everyone phoned the 811 Healthline number and followed their advice on what to do next.
Anyone who had any type of potential exposure was tested and they provided a list of all potential exposures to the Healthline.
Pohl said Xpert Rail Consulting used their plan to isolate and quickly contain any further potential spread.
“I don’t think you need one (a COVID plan) but every business should have one.”
One of the measures the company had done to stop any potential spread of COVID-19 was they instituted such policies as having workers work in teams. Under the team philosophy you always work with the same three people and that way COVID cannot spread from group to group. Administration and field staff are always isolated from one another to prevent COVID infecting the entire staff.
“Your plan does not have to be a ridiculous one but it should make common sense. You need a written plan and stick to it,” Pohl said.
COVID has affected the three workers differently with the employee that the firm could best identify as having contracted the virus first is also the employee who has COVID the worst. He is also the youngest of the employees who contracted the virus and likely in the best physical shape, which does not fit the mold people have been told about the illness.
He also is the employee who “never goes anywhere. He is super cautious, always wears a mask and gloves.” It is unknown where and when the employee contracted the virus with Pohl saying it could have been from something as simple as a door knob. All that is known is it is from an unknown community transmission.
Although not hospitalized he “got it really bad and he is in really bad shape.”
For another employee it was a simple two day thing and “he said if he did not know any better he would have gone to work after being run down for a couple of days."
While a third employee’s infection is typified with plugged up sinuses, a stuffed up head and the inability to smell and taste.
None of the three employees have had to be hospitalized as the illness has not affected any of the employee’s lungs.
To help ensure that no other employees had contracted COVID, all staff went for testing and staff who had even the slightest chance of being in contact with the virus are in isolation. None other than the three have tested positive or displayed symptoms.
After contacting 811, they received literature on the proper cleaning and sanitation to prevent a further viral spread. The government had online resources which had lots of information they used to ensure there was no further spread and any virus which might be contracted was properly destroyed by disinfection.
Time had already been taken to clean work trucks, shop areas and office areas thoroughly with a professional cleaner doing the disinfecting.
Pohl said he feels, although the government provided resource material and other online assistance he said was excellent, that to call what happened an outbreak is a misuse of the word.
“To call it an outbreak is a tough thing to say. We had COVID. We had a plan and we prevented it from spreading…it really is not a fair word to use it makes us sound like we didn’t do our due diligence. We are never going to put our people where we will get sick or hurt.
“Never in our minds was this an outbreak, not everyone got sick and we handled it…we are not proud about what happened to us but it didn’t turn into a case where everyone got sick that is what I would call an outbreak.
“By calling it an outbreak it makes us look bad that we are some kind of uncaring corporation. That is not true.”
The Saskatchewan Health Authority has defined a COVID-19 outbreak to be when two or more people have contracted COVID-19 at the same place away from the home or over a certain period of time.
Pohl said he did not oppose telling people there were COVID-19 cases in the community but given the initial response by the Province to not even identify the town where someone had contracted COVID-19 due to privacy legislation that there should be no public release by the SHA identifying a particular workplace or organization where a COVID ‘outbreak” has occurred.
He said people should be aware that COVID-19 is in the community but by publicizing the entity’s name there is an impetus not to report a potential outbreak as nobody wants to see their firm’s name published. It seems like a punishment for being honest and doing the right thing.
“We did everything right and for our efforts we are publicly identified. People who follow all of the rules and properly report people getting sick are punished for doing the right thing.”
There is a ongoing debate in medical circles that publishing the identities of firms and facilities with outbreaks could lead to underreporting on one side with an opposing medical view by making the names of firms and facilities where outbreaks occur is a strong incentive for them to strictly adhere to the rules.
He had no problem in the province stating that there was an outbreak at a workplace in whatever city so long as the workplace was not publicly identified. That way people will know to be cautious as there is COVID-19 cases in the community.
Pohl said he was informed that an outbreak was going to be declared on the weekend, although on Thursday it will be two weeks since the first staff members contracted the virus. And people will have served their necessary isolation unless they are sick.
To help ensure that the potential of more employees contracting COVID is further reduced staff members - approximately 50 percent of the staff - who have shown no symptoms but are in precautionary isolation will not be returning to work until after this coming weekend although they could return to work sooner.
