NORTH SYDNEY, N.S. — Marine Atlantic has temporarily suspended a ferry crossing while it tests staff after a crew member was confirmed to have COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the Crown Corp. was notified by Nova Scotia public health officials of a positive case involving a staff member who was recently aboard the MV Blue Puttees.
Nova Scotia reported a total of three new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday. Another case is in the northern zone and is a close contact of a previously reported case while a central zone case is related to travel outside Atlantic Canada.
There are now 23 active cases in Nova Scotia.
Darrell Mercer, head of corporate communications for Marine Atlantic, said about 125 people who worked on the ferry from early January began undergoing tests and asked to self-isolate until results are expected in the coming days.
Mercer said Marine Atlantic is taking an “abundance of caution” as it cancelled scheduled crossings of the Blue Puttees at 11:45 a.m. and 11:45 p.m. between North Sydney and Port-aux-Basques.
“Unfortunately, it is a virus that is highly contagious and does move as people move. We are a transportation provider, so there’s no 100 per cent guarantee that customers don’t travel and pass COVID-19 to another passenger or one of our employees. But what we’ve done is take numerous measures to try to protect against that, and as a result of that, in consultation with both of our public health agencies, the risk of transmission is relatively low but everybody wants to be proactive with this and make sure the information that is out there and make sure there is no risk of additional of spread is out there.”
Mercer said there will be a “deep clean” of the Blue Puttees, while its sister vessel, the MV Highlanders, continues the North Sydney-to-Port-aux-Basques run and the Leif Ericson handles the bulk of commercial traffic.
While the pandemic and season mean there are fewer people travelling from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland via the ferry service, they are preparing the MV Atlantic Vision to rejoin the fleet.
“Having one vessel or the other in the fleet at this time of the year should not make much of a significant difference,” he said.
“Having said that, we’d certainly love to see the Blue Puttees come back into service as soon as possible and we certainly hope to see our employee tests will come back negative.”
This seems to be the first time since the pandemic began that a Marine Atlantic employee has tested positive for the virus during a voyage., something Mercer said can be attributed to measures the ferry service implemented.
He said health and safety precautions to protect against the spread of COVID-19 have included enhanced cleaning, additional handwashing, customer screening, physical distancing, reduced passenger limits, isolation requirements, the installation of Plexiglas in customer-facing areas, mandatory masks, single-occupancy cabins for employees and commercial customers, and the suspension of onboard services.
“Of course there may have been other positive tests related to customers that we weren’t advised of, but from our perspective as part of the contact tracing, this is the first employee case.”
Chris Connors is a reporter with the Cape Breton Post.
