After a COVID-19 risk and possible exposure incident at the Decker Lake Forest Products mill, employees were sent home for sanitizing the facility.
“One of our Decker Lake employees was identified as a COVID-19 risk through contact tracing and we have shut the planer shift down this afternoon to clean the facility,” said Steve Zika, CEO of Hampton Affiliates.
As of Friday, there were already two COVID exposure incidents at William Konkin Elementary School in Burns Lake and the Decker Lake mill incident made it the third such incident in just two weeks.
The day also saw 711 new COVID-19 cases according to B.C. public health officials. While Fraser Health region saw the majority of community infections with 427 more cases from the latest daily total, Vancouver Coastal region added another 143 cases, Interior Health had 81, Northern Health saw 50 cases and Vancouver Island saw 10.
“We continue to face a significant surge in community transmission and new cases of COVID-19, which means following the provincial health officer’s orders and using all our layers of protection is necessary for every person in our province right now,” provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a statement Dec. 4.
While COVID-19 risk incident caused the mill to close at the time of going to press, there was no firm information on when it would reopen.
“We will evaluate future operations based on conditions as they develop,” said Zika.
- with files from Tom Fletcher
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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