Province issues alert to possible COVID-19 variant exposures in city

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/03/2021 (1704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two Winnipeg restaurant owners say they’ve been left scrambling, after the province informed them customers and staff may have been exposed to the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19 — minutes before the information was made public.

On Thursday, Manitoba health officials said probable carriers visited the Winnipeg eateries — Silver Heights Restaurant at 2169 Portage Ave. and Chicken Chef at 3770 Portage Ave. — March 5 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and March 6 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., respectively.

Garden City Hairstylists, in the Garden City Shopping Centre, was also listed as a possible exposure site from noon to 12:30 p.m. on March 6.

Silver Heights owner Tony Siwicki said he was blindsided by the news, receiving a phone call from a regional health nurse 10 minutes before the province made the announcement.

Within minutes, the restaurant’s phone began ringing off the hook.

“The notice was 10 minutes, there’s really nothing to absorb,” he said. “I’m still trying to figure out what to do next and how to protect the restaurant from any kind of backlash if any comes around, and I have to inform my employees and staff, of course.”

Unicity Chicken Chef owner Lori Lucas said she received a similar phone call around 10:45 a.m. Thursday.

“I should’ve been notified right away I think, and for other business — to call and give us 45 minutes before they’re publishing it for the public. I’m not concerned with the publishing, I’m concerned about how it was handled,” she said.

The restaurant remained closed as Lucas rushed to text employees of the potential exposure.

“It would have been nice to be able to give them more of a heads-up, absolutely… Anyone else that got blindsided, I totally feel for them,” she said.

The B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in the United Kingdom, is significantly more contagious than ones commonly found in Manitoba; however, both Lucas and Siwicki said they weren’t told in the initial phone call the exposure was a probable variant case.

Positive COVID-19 tests require secondary analysis to suggest they may be a variant strain and they are only counted as positive cases of the variant after they are sent to the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab for confirmation.

A spokesperson for the province confirmed the three exposures were linked to two people who had been diagnosed as probable cases of B.1.1.7, and there was no evidence of widespread community transmission.

“Public health officials strive to notify affected individuals or businesses of possible exposures as soon as they can, depending on the results of public health investigations,” the spokesperson said in an email

Health officials did not report any new confirmed cases caused by variant strains. There have been 22 confirmed cases of variants of concern that first appeared in the U.K. and South Africa.

On Thursday, the province reported 91 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths: a Winnipeg woman in her 60s; a woman in her 90s connected to an outbreak at Actionmarguerite St. Boniface; and a man in his 70s from Northern Health.

New COVID-19 cases were reported in all health regions. Northern Health posted 50 new infections, followed by Winnipeg at 31, Southern Health at seven, Prairie Mountain at two, and one in Interlake-Eastern.

As of Thursday morning, 156 people were being treated in hospital for COVID-19, including 22 in intensive care. Fifty-four were still considered infectious.

The provincial five-day test-positivity rate was 3.7 per cent, and 2.7 per cent in Winnipeg. A total of 2,116 COVID-19 swabs were processed by provincial laboratories Wednesday.

The death toll stood at 911 in Manitoba.

Outbreaks have been declared over at St. Boniface Hospital unit A5 and Seven Oaks General Hospital 3U1-3.