Quinte West Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Andrews says one of the biggest challenges many of their members have been facing recently are the changing rules around COVID testing, monitoring and isolating.
At the Chamber’s first meeting of the new year, she said employers have had to take on the role of Public Health and tell employees what to do when they become sick.
“They’re the ones that are having to tell their employees what the isolation rules are, whether they need to self monitor, self isolate. I’ve been getting more and more complicated situations and employers really are finding it very difficult to answer the questions.”
Andrews is working on setting up a question and answer session with Hastings Prince Edward Public Health officials
to offer members guidance.
Meanwhile, the chamber is waiting for 12,000 rapid antigen tests to arrive from the province.
The Quinte West organization was one of the first chambers to join the provincial testing program last spring.
Andrews says they’ve handed out 15,000 tests so far with about half of those doled out the last two weeks before the holidays as Omicron took over.
“Our order of tests from December 10 never got delivered and so we were splitting up boxes and trying to make them go into as many workplaces as we could.”
There are 192 employers on the wait list for the next round of tests which are expected to arrive within the next two weeks.
