City working to maintain essential services and reduce staffing impacts amid Omicron variant

He said the city’s workforce has already seen some staffing impacts in recent weeks due to the isolation requirements and the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

“We definitely have. We have had some cases where essential service workers were ultimately put in a quarantine scenario, through our own internal process that has been mitigated through bringing staff in through overtime,” he said.

While city departments have seen some staffing impacts, Brown said to date there has been no workplace transmission. Brown credited the city’s internal contact tracing as a big factor.

“We supported Alberta Health Services even in the previous waves doing our own contract tracing so that they could focus on the public and we have just continued with it just given the fact that we thought it was such a valuable resource, so that is the big asset we use and also simple things like enforcing, not just encouraging staying home when you are sick,” he said.

In order to ensure the service levels within the city are maintained during the fifth wave, Brown said the city much like the previous waves will resort to redeploying staff who are cross-trained to other more essential departments of the city. Adjustments of service levels may also occur depending on the situation.

Brown said the city is also working to develop a rapid testing program.

“Specifically with essential service staff so we can have a bit of a balanced approach so if it does become incredibly transmissible especially with our essential service staff, and we are potentially facing a service disruption we do have another tool in our toolbox to be able to bring them back but still have the ability to verify if they are infected with COVID-19,” he said.

On Jan. 3 new isolation requirements came into effect dropping the isolation requirement from 10 days to five for fully vaccinated Albertans as long as symptoms have resolved. The new requirements also allow essential workers to return to work sooner than five days under exceptional circumstances where a service disruption of 24 hours or more becomes harmful to the public.

At Tuesday’s council meeting Brown said the city is also focused on public facilities. He said facilities such as the Esplanade, and Co-op place may see service level disruptions due to Omicron and isolation requirements.

“Ultimately we need staff to be able to do this and if we don’t have staff then it is very difficult to have programming and operate those facilities as they should”

Currently, capacity restrictions are in place at public facilities. Co-op Place is limited to 50 percent capacity during major events, and no food or drink is being served. Brian Mastel, managing director of Public Services said that is in line with the province’s restrictions.

“To have food and beverage it has to be less than 500 people,” Mastel explained noting that if the restrictions exemptions program was not in place food and beverage would not be available at any facility

“We could reduce capacity to 499 but that would be challenging then for the events that we are hosting there. So we preserved spectator volumes but gave up food services there. But that is getting complicated as we are seeing some of the events being canceled,” he said.

When asked at what point will public facilities need to close, Brown said the city is following the province’s guidance.

“We’ve historically followed provincial requirements for all public-facing facilities and so I don’t foresee us taking more action, or putting more restrictions in based on the public facilities we have always followed the expert advice of Alberta Health Services as it relates to protecting the public.

Last year, the previous council was scrutinized for not acting swift enough when it came to imposing its own mask bylaw and other protective measures. Newly elected mayor Linnsie Clark reiterated that restrictions aimed at protecting public health are already in place.

“ I think at this point we are following the provincial mandate, which includes a mask mandate. I think we need to continue communicating and monitoring the situation. Right now the provincial mandate is taking precedence and of course internally as you heard we are making sure that we are having our essential and necessary services protected,” Clark said.

Currently, Medicine Hat has 321 active cases

by Tiffany Goodwein

City working to maintain essential services and reduce staffing impacts amid Omicron variant

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