Health staff taking COVID-19 samples at a drive-thru testing facility at the Brooks Health Centre in April. (CHAT News file photo)

By Alex McCuaig

JBS safety

Safety improvements at Brooks meat processor protecting workers from COVID

Dec 3, 2020 | 5:10 PM

BROOKS, AB – As cases surge across the province, Brooks has managed to avoid a repeat of that city’s outbreak in the spring which saw more than a thousand active cases swamp the community of 15,000 people.

It was a harrowing scene that unfolded in the city in April with a makeshift testing facility set up in a parking lot at the Brooks Health Centre.

There were lessons learned during the spring which saw 650 cases linked to those who work at the JBS meat processing facility.

Lessons the city’s Mayor Barry Morishita says the community has learned from and which JBS has reacted to by imposing a wide ranging safety initiatives which haven’t seen an outbreak at the facility since the spring.

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“And they continue to take measures and they continue to very pro-active,” said Morishita. “Where the community spread was happening, they protected their workers which protected their business and that made a lot of sense and they continue to do that.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Mohammed Idriss whose a manager at the Brooks and County Immigration Services that provides supports to many of the newcomers who work at JBS.

“If you had the experience of going in before, you might not recognize many areas of the plant,” said Idriss. “It’s one-way traffic – there is no two-way traffic. It is social distancing, it is additional spacing for breaks, cafeteria and all of that and there are actual partitions on the assembly line.”

And the company is reaching out to the community as well, announcing in October it will be providing $2 million to groups in the city to help deal with the pandemic.

While the company did not respond to request for comment, Morishita says he is appreciative of JBS’s efforts to improve COVID protections in the city.

“I think our community is benefiting from them being able to work with us and us being able to work with them,” said Morishita. “And I’m really happy to have them as our partner in our community.”