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Osoyoos Times Staff

Interior Health (IH) is investigating an outbreak of COVID-19 illness involving a group of temporary foreign workers residing in housing at a West Kelowna agricultural business.

A group of temporary foreign workers residing in on-site housing at Bylands Nurseries Ltd. are to remain in quarantine on the property until an IH medical health officer (MHO) officer provides alternate direction. This followed confirmation of COVID-19 cases among this group.

“The MHO is confident that the risk of exposure to the general public is low. None of the workers were in roles that interact with customers and members of this group had very minimal contact in the community,” an Interior Health press release stated.

The business is currently closed to customers. IH says the cases may be linked to a group of workers who arrived in Kelowna from outside of Canada on March 12.

Under order of the MHO, Bylands Nurseries and Garden Centre has undertaken several measures including enhanced cleaning of all nursery, housing, sanitary and other facilities accessed by employees, as well as denying access to all visitors to the site.

“These are farm workers who came in on the temporary foreign worker program prior to there being restrictions in early March,” Dr. Bonnie Henry said during the daily provincial media briefing in Victoria on March 31.

She said the workers were tested sometime over the weekend and IH conducted a public health investigation to follow up with people who may have been in contact with the workers.

The workers live on the site in good housing accommodations, which provide space for individuals to be self-isolated safely, IH stated in a press release.

There are 75 total workers involved  – 63 migrant workers and 12 local workers. All are self-isolating.

Interior Health stated there are 14 positive COVID-19 test results. Some additional results are pending.

“These people were being isolated in that they weren’t going out into the community because they had come in from another country,” Henry said. “But there was some considerable mixing on the farm when they were working together.”

“It is a community outbreak that was caught relatively early we hope, but we will see over the next coming two weeks.”

Henry said it will be two to four weeks “before we understand the extent of this outbreak.”