Today, I discovered that an employee of the Safeway downstairs test positive and they last worked at the supermarket on December 1. It’s not clear how often or what days they worked prior to that date. As some of you might realize, it’s already two weeks past the last day that employee was at the store. I don’t feel ill, so I’m going to assume I am not sick. There is a chance that anyone could asymptomatic but it’s not likely I fall into that category.
There’s a couple things to note from this. The Safeway only made this public on December 11. I’m going to guess they informed the public as soon as they knew. As far as I know, the store did not close for an additional amount of time to clean and sanitize. I’ve seen other businesses close for several days to ensure everything is safe for the public again. In terms of supermarkets, I know T&T will not hesitate to close completely for two or three days to sanitize. It’s difficult to say why Safeway doesn’t do the same. I am hoping that during the overnight closure, they did more cleaning than usual. It’s also not clear if any other employees are now in isolation. Did they just send that one employee home and then allowed their co-workers to continue to go to work? That seems stupid.
I go to this Safeway for almost all my groceries. With the recent surge in cases, I try to go to this location once at a week at most but sometimes I’m there more frequently. I’m not there everyday but there are weeks where I shop two or three times a week at that location. I of course wear a mask but no one wants to put themselves at added risk.
The virus continues to swirl around us, probably both literally and figuratively. We are in the most dangerous time of the pandemic. At least in this province, each day is worse than the previous day. I shouldn’t be surprised that something like this has happened so close to home now.
We need to stay vigilant, wear a mask, wash your hands, and be physically distant from those outside your household. There is an end to this, we can see it but it is still months away. Let’s keep our focus.