New Brusnwick’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Jennifer Russell reported no new cases of COVID-19 in the province for the 11th day in a row yesterday.
New symptoms have been added to the list that should trigger a call to 811, including:
- a new onset of fatigue;
- a new onset of muscle pain;
- diarrhea;
- loss of sense of taste or loss of sense of smell; and
- in children, purple markings on the fingers or toes.
These symptoms are in addition to:
- fever above 38°C;
- a new cough or worsening chronic cough;
- sore throat;
- runny nose; and
- headache.
Anyone with two or more of those symptoms is being asked to call 811.
Yesterday Russell said that 301 people had placed calls to 811 the day before, and that about half of those people were referred to testing centres. The province completed just over 260 tests, about one quarter of its capacity of 1000 tests per day.
Russell was asked if and when New Brunswick could be considered clear of the virus, and she cautioned that because of movement of people across borders, new cases could still pop up.
AUDIO April 30 Russell Clip 1
From a public health perspective, what we know is that we will continue to be at risk for travel related cases. I can’t even say that we won’t see any more community transmission cases….
COVID-19 is not gone. Just because we have zero cases in the province today, we will have more cases we will have to take swift action to control new outbreaks when they occur, which we will do we have a fantastic public health team that reacts very quickly to cases when necessary, and we have seen that over and over again. So when and if that happens, we will have to ask some of you perhaps all of you to accept the re imposition of restrictions on your lives until a vaccine or other treatment becomes widely available. But obviously, the more successful we are at social distancing, self isolation, wearing community masks, hand washing. These things will be important as we continue through each phase and will be imperative for our success moving forward
Premier Blaine Higgs stuck to his guns on his government’s ban on temporary foreign workers yesterday. Despite concerns from farmers and fish processors that losing access to skilled workers who have been coming for years to work on farms and in fish plants will hurt their production capabilities, Higgs said the workers currently in New Brunswick will have to fill the gap.
AUDIO Higgs clip 2
I know it’s not going to be business as usual. But it hasn’t been for the last two months. It’s certainly not business as usual for every every everyone in this province. So let’s just keep on a program and a path that will minimize the risk to our citizens.
The National Farmers Union in New Brunswick, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick and Really Local Harvest have issued a statement objecting strongly to the new restrictions on incoming temporary foreign workers.
In the statement, co-owner of Strawberry Hill Farm Tim Livingstone said: “This is cutting the means by which we have to produce. They want us to increase vegetable production but want us to hire people who may leave at the drop of a hat or before our season has finished”
He said Strawberry Hill Farm has invested in training its temporary foreign workers for over four years and rely on their expertise to supervise their local employees.
Higgs estimated yesterday that New Brusnwick has about 70,000 people unemployed, including students, and said that with those numbers, it should be possible to fill the 600 jobs currently under application for the temporary foreign worker program.
AUDIO April 30 Higgs Clip 3
I am counting on and confident of the many people that are going to come to the plate here and say, I can help my local farmer I can help my local fish browser processor. I can be part of the solution in order to do my part to continue to keep our province safe and healthy and not pose any unsafe risks or any additional risks during this health pandemic.
I know it’s easy to say, you know, my business is is it can’t start up as normal, but nothing is normal right now. And so what we want to be sure is your business wills, it can and it will start up and that we will find people that are able to help your business succeed,
