Rising COVID numbers outside the province and the prevalence of variants of concern has prompted Public Health officials to change the requirements around essential workers coming into the province.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says essential workers are necessary for “the continued functioning of our communities.”
Before now, essential workers were allowed to proceed directly to work and isolate at all times when not working. Starting Monday, that changes.
New testing and self-isolation requirements will be in place for essential workers, ensuring that they are tested upon arrival in the province and they must self-isolate before receiving the result of that test result.
Essential workers staying in the province two days or less will not require an arrival test but must remain in self-isolation when not working.
Those staying longer must be tested again on days seven, eight, or nine and then again toward the end of the 14-day self-isolation period.
If at any point any symptoms develop, new testing must be arranged, even if a negative test result was previously received.
Different testing arrangements are being made for truck drivers whose time in the province is limited, the details of which are available on the provincial government’s COVID website.