Sarnia's mayor is again urging Lambton Public Health to increase communication about COVID cases in the community.
Mike Bradley said the primary control group is concerned with how the communication was handled after five positive cases were identified on a commercial ship in Sarnia Harbour this week.
"We are trying to address that with a letter to the county that went out yesterday from the CAO of the city, who is head of the primary control group, saying that there are very serious concerns here," said Bradley. "The first thing that one needs to do in any crisis is communicate, communicate, communicate and the harbour is owned by the city and we believe that we should have been notified immediately so that we would have been understanding exactly what steps were being taken and that was disappointing."
Crews from Belfor Property Restoration wear white suits and masks to clean the Damia Desgagnes tanker at Sarnia Harbour. October 2, 2020. (BlackburnNews.com photo by Melanie Irwin)
Bradley said it's his understanding the ship is a Montreal-based asphalt/bitumen tanker with close to 20 people on it, most of whom were taken off and put in quarantine. The Damia Desgagnés is docked at Sarnia Harbour.
"The understanding from the city's primary control group is that another crew will be brought in and the ship will be cleaned and the people that were on the boat are at a local hotel going through the process of being confined as they go through the COVID testing, and five have tested [positive] and there are a number of others that could be exposed."
Bradley said unless there were suppliers going in and out, the virus should have been contained.
"That's the whole point of why we're asking the county to start getting more engaged with providing information to the communities that are impacted by COVID. We shouldn't be second guessing, we shouldn't be hearing rumours. We should be hearing direct facts to us , and to the community about the situation, how it occurred and what steps were taken immediately to deal with it."
He said the need for regular communication to the city and public needs to be addressed.
"The city's had no involvement, or been asked to be engaged in this. It's public health and it's Transport Canada and what is of concern to the city primary control group is that we had to be told by citizens what was going on. We were never notified by public health that this situation was unfolding and the ship had been here from the 28th [of September] and public health was at the ship, I understood, on the 29th. So, we are not part of what's occurring."
Bradley also has concerns that the cases won't be recorded in the local reports.
"Those people were residents of the city with COVID when public health got engaged with them and they should be reflected, whether it's negative or positive, in the statistics put out every day as it related to the COVID count in the community."
Suncor told BlackburnNewsSarnia.com on Friday that there was no contact between crew members and its personnel at its refinery dock when the ship was there.
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