DECEMBER 8, 2020 – Olymel like many other facilities in Cornwall Ontario has been hit by an outbreak of Covid-19. The Cornwall plant is busy, but struggling to get local employees with many bused in from Quebec as well as foreign temporary workers used.
From one of the local workers:
We had a meeting to be informed about it and according to management the health unit is taking care of contact tracing. Apparently they did extra cleaning during the weekend as they knew about it last Friday.
This all because of a birthday party that these people attended and have infected their relatives.
CFN reached out to Olymel and spokesperson Richard Vigneault confirmed the following:
I can confirm that the number of Covid-19 positive cases at our Cornwall plant is 3 (three).
We wish those three people would recover promptly.
10 other employees who had contact with the three employees tested positive have been requested to isolate themselves and get tested.
The situation is under control and as everywhere in our installations across Canada we work closely with Health Public Services and OHS. A lot of sanitary measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are in place at the Olymel Cornwall plant with strict application and supervision and we receive a very good cooperation from all our employees.
He also confirmed that the arrival in Cornwall of temporary foreign workers was bumped to January. There is a shortage of local workers in Cornwall that impacts all of the larger blue collar employers due to a critical housing shortage and the fact that so few want to move to Cornwall.
The EOHU has not disclosed any numbers related to Olymel and refuses to answer questions from this newspaper.
We can be reached at info@cornwallfreenews.com