Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has put a new order in place to allow WorkSafeBC to issue temporary closure notices to workplaces where three or more workers are sick.
The order under the Public Health Act allows WorkSafeBC prevention officers, at the direction of a medical health officer, to serve closures lasting at least 10 days when transmission has been proven to have occurred in the workplace.
“Whether it’s some people – workers having a social interaction and bringing the virus into the workplace and then it spreading, or whether it’s in the workplace itself that the contact is happening – they are one of the most common sources of transmission in our province, and it is widely across many different sectors.”
Henry says her aim is to control and prevent outbreaks so she doesn’t have to shut down all non-essential workplaces.
The new order comes as 1,293 new cases of COVID-19 were reported today in the province, which is, by far, a record for B.C. for any single day during the pandemic.