(file photo/ City of Brooks)

By Tiffany Goodwein

Mayor of Brooks urging residents to follow COVID-19 protocols this long weekend

May 16, 2020 | 12:01 PM

BROOKS AB- As people head into the long weekend, the mayor of Brooks is asking residents not to let up on COVID-19 protocols this long weekend.

Taking to Facebook live Saturday morning, Brooks Mayor Barry Morishita said the last time the city had a significant rise in COVID-19 cases was after the Easter long weekend.

“I understand that long weekends are a gret time for socializing and getting together and we can still do that but we need to do it responsibly, and we need do it thoughtfully so we aren’t going to be in the same position we were in a month ago,” Morishita said.

The number of new cases spiked into the triple digits shortly after the Easter long weekend.

The city has seen 1075 cases of the virus and seven deaths but recoveries have risen over the past week and a half. There are now 986 recovered cases and just 82 active cases in the City of Brooks.

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The city’s significant progress is why the mayor is pressing residents to following social distancing protocols and remember the limits placed on gatherings.

“We don’t want to let our guard down because our active case numbers are decreasing. We want to keep it that way,” he said.

As part of the effort of contain the spread, the City of Brooks, The County of Newell and AHS resorted to asymptomatic testing to better understand the spread of the virus.

A second round of testing occurred last week.

Morishita revealed that 1663 swabs were performed over three days during the second round of testing and roughly one percent came back positive, based on the number of new cases announced last week. In April, during the first asymptomatic testing centre roughly 10 per cent of tests came back positive.

With no vaccine on the horizon, the mayor of Brooks is pushing for more testing after the long weekend.

“The numbers bear out that testing, testing, testing is the best way to understand what is happening in your community, and now that the province has increased their testing to a nearly 16,000 per day capacity, I think there is a lot of capacity available and that we should be using it, particularly in areas like Calgary and Brooks that need to be delayed because of their infection rate” he said.

The mayor noted that AHS South Zone makes the final decision on a testing site. He also said the city tried to expand the hours so that more essential workers can get tested but were unsuccessful the first time.

As for the delay in the relaunch, the mayor said he applauds the province’s decision to delay the reopening to May 25 in order to to ensure public safety.

“The goal is to keep the cases at a reasonable level because we are not going to stop them. We don’t have a cure, we don’t have a vaccine, so we are not going to stop COVID-19. But if we do what we have been doing for the last two weeks going forward, even through the relaunch then we will keep the cases low and we will certainly be able to progress,” he said.