Lethbridge Marks 59 Active COVID-19 Cases Among City Employees Friday – Lethbridge | The Canadian News

Members of the city council met Friday as the Lethbridge Emergency Advisory Committee to hear an update on COVID-19.

Community Services Director Mike Fox said there are currently 59 active cases of COVID-19 within the city’s workforce, with the Lethbridge Police Service and Transit Department being the hardest hit.

“Usually it’s firefighters, EMS, police, traffic – it’s the front-line people who are dealing with people every day,” he said.

Fox said the city’s focus in dealing with the fifth wave of COVID-19 fueled by Omicron is to plan for the worst, but hope for the best.

“I think we are just seeing the beginning of this wave in the province,” Fox said. “Our daily case count has just increased in this area, but in the city we are not at the highest level that we have seen.”

According to Fox, the vaccination rate for city employees is around 90 percent, and the other 10 percent can follow the rapid test protocol. The Enmax Center, Lethbridge Airports, and Fire & EMS are the only departments with mandatory immunization requirements.

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Emergency Preparedness Manager Luke Palmer said service has not been impacted at this time and the focus at this time is to maintain business continuity.

“Our current situation is very different from our previous closure, so we need to make sure that we are looking at what is different now and what has changed, and what will influence some of these decisions that could affect service,” Palmer said.

Palmer said that if a department experiences a particularly large outbreak, the city can ask for help from the surrounding area. Lethbridge is one of more than 30 communities included in the Southern Alberta Emergency Management Resource Sharing Agreement.

“We are willing to help each other and that creates more collaboration across the region,” Palmer said. “We generally share the same dangers, and luckily for us, COVID is global, so we are all experiencing it at the same time and we can support each other.”

Palmer said the city participates in weekly discussions with the province and Alberta Health, and said Dr. Deena Hinshaw has told the city to anticipate that at least 30 percent of employees will be affected by the Omicron variant.