Watershed health checkup with EOS Eco Energy; Chignecto Isthmus update expected today
Listen to Tantramar Report for Friday, March 18, 2022:
Petition calls for indoor masking in NB schools until end of April, local residents divided
Children returned from March Break across New Brunswick on Monday just as the provincial government lifted all remaining COVID-19 restrictions.
An online petition is calling for the province to maintain universal indoor masking in schools until at least the end of April.
“Removing universal masking protection in schools will negatively impact any member of the school community who is at risk, which is counter to the principles of inclusion in New Brunswick schools,” the petition states.
“It puts families in the position of needing to remove children from school to protect their vulnerable family members.”
The petition had garnered more than 1,300 virtual signatures by Thursday.
For more on this story, CHMA spoke to Kathleen Gadd, one of the authors of the petition. She’s a Mount Allison University graduate, and a mother of three young children living in Miramichi.
“The school day represents a long exposure, if you happen to have somebody in the class who is contagious with COVID during the school day,” she said. “So the school, I think, is an important setting.”
CHMA reached out to local parents via social media, and they expressed conflicting views on the topic via Facebook.
“I worry that cases in schools are not being reported, and I also worry about the amount of kids who will be sent to school sick, because a parent cannot afford to take time off work,” said Danielle Pellerin, who has children in Grade 1 and Grade 5.… Continue
Longtime market vendor expands into Moncton storefront
Hardy’s Produce, a longstanding vendor at the Sackville Farmer’s Market, has opened a retail store along a busy traffic corridor in central Moncton.
On Wednesday, Jesse Hardy was placing orders in the back room, while his mother and father – Sandy and Allan Hardy – ran the cash register and played with Jesse’s young daughter.
“It’s a family-owned business,” Jesse said. “Everybody’s involved in it. So it’s been keeping us all busy.”
Inside the aisles of the roughly 3,600-square-foot retail space on Mountain Road were piles of fresh produce, like granny smiths, royal galas and other kinds of apples, each marked with a handwritten sign.
In 2015, the Hardy family bought a small farm in Grand-Barachois, growing crops such as potatoes, tomatoes and peppers.
Hardy’s Produce previously operated a storefront in Middle Sackville and has been among the vendors at the Sackville Farmers’ Market for roughly 10 years.
The farmers’ market often serves as an incubator for small businesses, said market coordinator Michael Freeman.
“Every year, at least one of our market members [has] kind of propelled themselves up into that brick and mortar status,” Freeman said.
Hardy’s is the first example of a market vendor setting up shop in Moncton, as far as Freeman could recall. “This is a pretty big one,” he said.… Continue
Climate change and flooding in the Tantramar region
Listen here to Tantramar Report for Monday, February 21, 2022:
Friday on TR: New system to report sexual misconduct; municipal reform committee meets; storm wallops N.B.
On today’s Tantramar Report:
Mount Allison University has launched a new way for people to report sexual misconduct, harassment or assault on campus.
The move comes as part of an ongoing effort to respond to decades-long concerns about sexual violence on the Mount A campus.
In November 2020, then-student Michelle Roy posted an image of herself on social media, in graduation attire and holding a sign accusing the school of supporting rapists.
Since then, the university has brought in a third-party organization to respond to and support survivors of sexual violence, commissioned an independent review of its practices, and hired Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Coordinator, Dr. Tasia Alexopolous.
CHMA reporter Erica Butler called up Dr. Alexopolous this week to find out more about REES, and how it might impact sexual violence on campus.
Also on today’s show: Sackville town council’s municipal reform committee held its first ever-meeting this week. Erica Butler was there and brings us some highlights.
Plus more local news and information:
Tantramar Climate Change Week
The 10th annual Tantramar Climate Change Week starts on Saturday with an information booth at the Sackville Farmers’ Market.
A series of free online events organized by Eos Eco-Energy takes place throughout the week, including a climate change virtual trivia night next Friday, Feb. 11. You can find the full schedule online at eosecoenergy.com.
Friday on TR: Amalgamation process begins; NB returns to Level 2; First Nation asks for help finding missing woman
Today’s feature on Tantramar Report:
The province has appointed the facilitator who will oversee the amalgamation of Sackville, Dorchester and surrounding areas.
Chad Peters is currently CEO of a Moncton-based communications firm, and former manager with Southwestern Energy Resources, the company behind controversial fracking exploration in New Brunswick in the early 2010s.
Peters is also a former staffer in the Progressive Conservative legislative office, and ran for the PCs in a provincial by-election in Moncton East in 2007. He had announced his candidacy for mayor of Moncton in January 2020, but did not run in the 2021 election. Peters had his first meeting with Sackville staff and council this week.
CHMA’s Erica Butler called up Sackville Town Councillor Bill Evans, who has been a vocal opponent of amalgamation, to hear about the first meeting.
Also on Tantramar Report:
Missing woman from St. Mary’s First Nation
Saint Mary’s First Nation has asked for support in locating Erin Maureen Brooks.
The 38-year-old woman was last seen on Dec. 27 at St. Mary’s Smoke Shop in Fredericton, according to the Indigenous community.
She’s described as five-foot-two-inches tall and 115 pounds, with multiple tattoos, including the word “Boo” on the left side of her chest.
In 2018, Brooks shared a post on social media as part of a campaign for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, stating that if she ever went missing, “someone took me against my will or worse.… Continue
Task force optimistic about hospital services; Mount Allison union calls on province to “preserve and enhance” hospital
The leaders of a community task force on rural health care say they’re optimistic services at the Sackville Memorial Hospital will be restored.
The Mount Allison Faculty Association is also throwing its support behind the movement to restore hospital services.
Former Sackville mayor John Higham is one of the co-chairs of the Memramcook-Tantramar Rural Health Action Group.
In a statement, Higham said the group felt encouraged by year-end meetings with Horizon Health Network.
Officials from the regional health authority “have given us hope that the cutbacks against which we protested last year will indeed be temporary,” Higham said in the statement.
The emergency department at Sackville Memorial Hospital is currently open between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. seven days a week following service reductions.
But Horizon officials say they’re committed to restoring 24/7 emergency care, according to the statement from the Rural Health Action Group.
Officials from the health authority have also indicated they intend to return to a full complement of acute-care beds, along with “further investments in additional services,” according to the statement.
It said the health authority has also agreed to work with the local action group on marketing efforts meant to retain and recruit doctors, nurses and other staff in the region.
In December, Horizon announced the acute care unit at Sackville Memorial would close, and those beds would be used for people awaiting long-term care. … Continue
Dornan’s plea as NB moves to level 3: “we just simply cannot tolerate 220 inpatients with COVID.”
New Brunswick is moving into Level 3 of its winter plan, with slight variations, tonight at midnight. The move comes as Public Health announces the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 has grown to 104, with 9 people in an ICU and 3 people on ventilators.
Four more people succumbed to the disease yesterday, bringing the death toll in New Brunswick to 178.
Case counts, though admittedly underreported, continue to climb. There are over 6600 active cases confirmed through PCR testing in the province. More than half of those are in two zones, Zone 2, the Saint John region, has over 2400 cases, and Zone 1 has nearly 1900 cases.
At a conference Thursday afternoon, Premier Higgs stated several times his unhappiness with the move to maximum level restrictions. “Moving to level three was never something I wanted to do,” said the Premier, “and I really hate to take this next step.”
Higgs said the level 3 restrictions would be in place for 16 days, from midnight tonight until midnight on Sunday January 30. The move, he said, was being made in the wake of Tuesday’s projections about Omicron hospitalizations hitting over 200 by the end of the month, without a substantial reduction in the rate of close contacts among New Brunswickers.
Higgs said he had no choice but to bring in the more severe restrictions, to prevent a sudden wave of hospitalizations from overwhelming an already stretched system. He also held out hope that the measures would be short-lived.… Continue
At the beginning of a “tidal wave” of Omicron, Public Health asks people to reduce contacts without additional restrictions
The news was dire in a technical briefing yesterday from New Brusnwick’s department of health.
Mathieu Chalifoux, lead COVID-19 epidemiologist with Public Health, presented projections for case counts and hospitalizations into the next two months, showing a steep curve peaking at the end of January or beginning of February.
Chalifoux said over 5000 New Brunswickers can be expected to develop the disease daily by the end of the month. ”Over a five day period, this would be about 25,000 individuals, assuming 2.3 individuals per household. This could mean over 7% or approximately 55,000 people isolating at any given moment,” the epidemiologist warned.
Unlike the last projections presented by the province, these account for the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant which is now dominant in the province, but there have been some changes since the projections were created. In early January, the province started to limit eligibility for testing. Those limits could mean official PCR numbers come in lower than the stated projections, unless results from rapid tests are included.
The province has started to report the results from rapid tests that are being voluntarily submitted by those who test positive with the take-home test kits. On Tuesday, there were 191 new positive PCR cases announced, along with 842 new positive rapid test results.
Chalifoux acknowledged that case counts based on PCR testing are underreported, but increasingly the more important metric is the number of people that will need to be admitted to hospital with COVID-19.… Continue
Omicron strains health-care system, workers face exhaustion, say unions
Nearly 200 COVID-positive health-care workers in the Horizon Health Network were isolating by Friday, according to the regional health authority.
It’s unclear how many workers at Sackville Memorial Hospital are affected, but that figure included 41 health-care staff in the health region overall.
CHMA reached out to officials from unions representing health-care workers to learn how the rapid spread of COVID-19 is affecting their members and hospital operations.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees represents approximately 140 job classifications in the health-care system.
Examples include pandemic screeners, security guards, clerical staff, patient care attendants, maintenance workers, housekeeping and dietary staff.
Norma Robinson, president of the New Brunswick Council of Hospital Unions, CUPE Local 1252, said efforts are underway to procure personal protective equipment to safeguard workers from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
The self-isolation of infected workers is putting further strain on the health-care system, but there was no indication the issue was particularly severe at the Sackville hospital by Friday, she said.
Patients may encounter delays, and she asked the public for patience. “It might take a little bit longer, but we’re there to serve, and we’re trying to keep everybody healthy and safe,” she said.
Alana Best, a nursing unit clerk and CUPE union president at the Sackville hospital, said COVID-19 was more nerve-wracking earlier in the pandemic, but the situation remains difficult.… Continue