After nearly three years, Windsor-Essex’s COVID-19 isolation and recovery centre for migrant workers will close at the end of March due to dwindling demand.
In an email, the County of Essex’s acting chief administrative officer Mary Birch said that the 50-bed centre is closing because “no agri-food workers have been isolating and recovering at the centre in recent months.” As well, the funding agreement with the federal government is set to expire by the end of this month.
The county’s community services manager Jeanie Diamond-Francis couldn’t say for how long the centre has been empty, but she noted that it hasn’t been used for “several months.”
“The need for the site has decreased. We worked with community partners and we feel that at this time, the centre is no longer needed,” Diamond-Francis said in an interview with CBC News.
“The burden of illness [isn’t] as prevalent in our community, therefore the need for the isolation and recovery centre was not as significant as it was in the past.”
The City of Windsor had initially started the centre in the summer of 2020 to help manage a significant number of COVID-19 outbreaks among agriculture workers on Windsor-Essex farms. Throughout 2020 and 2021, hundreds of migrant worker COVID-19 cases were being reported by the local health unit.
Many agriculture workers contracted the illness and farms were under significant scrutiny for the way that the outbreaks were being handled. At least one farm in the region was ordered to stop operating following a significant outbreak of 191 COVID-19 cases.
Jeanie Diamond-Francis is the County of Essex’s community services manager. She also managed the operations of the COVID-19 isolation and recovery centre since July 2022. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)
Due to congregate living and close working conditions, the disease quickly spread among workers, prompting local leaders to create a space where workers could isolate, receive medical attention and recover.
The County of Essex took over operations of the centre in July 2022 and it was given $4.2 million in funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada to run the site until March 2023.
It’s unclear how much the centre has cost in total to operate. CBC News has reached out to the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Ministry of Health for this amount, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
‘Nothing has changed:’ Advocate
Reflecting on the past three years, Chris Ramsaroop, organizer of the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Workers, told CBC News that he doesn’t think the agriculture sector is any more equipped to handle future health crises.
“We need to start preparing for the next outbreak and to ensure that preparations are put in place for other infectious disease and infectious hazards that workers will have going into the future,” he said.
“It seems that we have not learned any of the lessons from this pandemic.”
Ramsaroop said “nothing has changed” when it comes to housing, noting that workers are still living in crowded conditions. He also said there is still an “asymmetrical power imbalance” between workers and employers.
Chris Ramsaroop is an organizer with the group Justice for Migrant Workers. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)
He said he wants to see workers get permanent status on arrival to Canada, changes to labour laws to better protect workers and policies in place to ensure that workers don’t face reprisal for using their rights in the workplace.
In the federal government’s 2021 budget, it had committed $49.5 million over three years for a new Migrant Worker Support Program that would help workers recognize and exercise their rights, promote social and cultural activities and support workers in emergency situations.
According to the County of Essex, the isolation and recovery centre helped isolate more than 1,200 workers throughout its operations. At one point, the City of Windsor had been operating multiple sites to keep up with the number of workers who needed to isolate due to being a close contact or testing positive.
Each year, about 10,000 agriculture workers come to Windsor-Essex to work on farms.
Birch said that should a need arise for this type of centre again, the County of Essex is “prepared to work with other partners to re-establish the service.”
The Canadian Red Cross provided daily oversight of the centre and medical help was offered by Erie Shores Health Care, Essex-Windsor Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Windsor Regional Hospital.
VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.
In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.
The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.
Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”
Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
