A COVID-19 outbreak at Forged Fitness in Martensville is causing confusion for owner Chris Buhr when it comes to contact tracing and who exactly needs to self-isolate.
The business received mixed messages from the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) after four people who tested positive for COVID-19 used the facility while infectious.
When it comes to contract tracing Buhr feels that his gym is being treated differently than other businesses.
Usually the public is informed of the dates and times of when a person who is infectious attends a business. This enables others to know if they actually came into contact with that person and need to self monitor.
“They had not told one person that’s asked, in regards to my case, what the dates and times are,” said Buhr. “And they say they cannot release that information because it’s confidential, which is really confusing because they do it on every other incident.”
According to Buhr, an SHA representative said the gym is supposedly a “high risk environment” and people who used the gym from February 9 to 20 all were told to self isolate for 14 days from the last day they used the gym.
Buhr said the SHA asked for a list of people who used the gym between those dates so they could assess whether those individuals need to self-isolate or self-monitor.
But, Buhr said the SHA just told all of the 180 members on that list they need to be in self-isolation, even though the majority of them were not in contact with the infectious people.
“They even quoted the facility as being the environment that is the risk, not people; it’s the facility because of the ventilation and stuff,” said Buhr. “But nobody from the SHA has ever stepped foot in my gym and even knows what is going on in there.”
The four people who tested positive had identified themselves to Buhr and they gave him permission to publicly post the dates of when they used the gym while infectious, since the SHA wasn’t doing that. That gave a clearer picture to those who were told to self-isolate, if they were even actually at the gym the same time as those who were infected.
After Buhr, along with members of the gym, had more conversations with the SHA representative handling this case, they realized that all of the 180 members didn’t need to be in self-isolation.
“Some of them were being reassessed and actually didn’t have to isolate anymore or they’re getting some days taken of their isolation period,” said Buhr. “This is based on me personally releasing the dates and times of the infected individuals, so people can see for themselves that they were actually not in contact with the infected people.”
Buhr got in touch with a gym in Saskatoon that recently had a positive case of COVID-19 and he said the gym was contacted immediately after the positive case was confirmed, That wasn’t the case for Forged Fitness.
“So it kind of blows my mind. Basically what they’ve told me multiple times is the reason why they are doing this is because a gym is very high risk environment. And if that is true, then why wasn’t I contacted earlier?” said Buhr.
He said he knew for a fact that in early February one of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 notified SHA right away.
“They isolated as soon as they had symptoms,” said Buhr. “They tested immediately; it came back positive, and SHA contacted them. They told them they were at Forged Fitness and SHA did not contact me until February 26.”
While everything was still getting sorted out, Forged Fitness was still open and did not have to be shut down. If something like this does happen again Buhr hopes it would be handled differently.