Brooks Mayor Barry Morishita (City of Brooks)

By Justin Goulet

Brooks mayor says city is in good shape to keep COVID-19 case numbers low

Jul 16, 2020 | 11:30 AM

BROOKS, AB – Once a hotbed for COVID-19 in Alberta, the City of Brooks is on the mend.

In all, the city has seen 1,121 cases, according to Alberta Health Services (AHS). As of Thursday morning, there are only three active cases listed in the community.

Brooks was hit particularly hard earlier this year due to an outbreak of COVID-19 linked to the JBS meatpacking plant.

READ MORE: Province placing high priority on managing COVID-19 outbreaks in meatpacking plants

Lethbridge News Now spoke with mayor Barry Morishita to see how the community has responded to the downswing in COVID-19 cases. He said getting the numbers down was a “big community effort”.

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“We did a big push on education, but we also took some practical measures. We set up the isolation sites off-site from people’s homes. There were some issues of people being able to isolate in their own homes,” Morishita said.

He explained that another help in educating the public on the seriousness of the virus was two asymptomatic testing events held in Brooks in partnership with AHS.

READ MORE: Asymptomatic testing event in Brooks draw in 3,653

“I think those were really big drivers of getting it under control and I think there are two things I’d attribute that to. One is just the awareness overall, and then the second thing was just not knowing what our situation was,” Morishita told LNN.

“In the first asymptomatic test, nearly 10 percent of the people were testing positive for COVID. I think it really let us know how widespread it was in the community, so I think people really took some measures because there was quantitative evidence that the virus was very widespread. So, when we did the second asymptomatic [testing event], it was less than one percent [positive results], and I think that in itself was one of the huge turning points in our community.”

Morishita noted that there are no other asymptomatic testing events planned in Brooks, as the province expanded testing to those without symptoms at the end of May.

The mayor said he’s been getting tested every couple of weeks, due to his line of work in the public.

RELAUNCH

Brooks and Calgary’s participation in stage one of the province’s relaunch strategy was delayed by about a week, due to the high volume of cases at the time in each community.

Morishita said since local businesses have been able to reopen, the community has responded well. He added they haven’t heard any complaints from residents on the relaunch.

He again reinforced the importance of education when it comes to defeating COVID-19.

“I think AHS worked with us really well on the test centres, but I think the ongoing message has to be paying attention to what’s going on, watching the numbers, getting tested regularly even if you’re not symptomatic,” he said, adding the community is well positioned to keep case numbers low.

“Brooks is open and ready, it’s open and busy and people are moving around and doing it safely here, that’s for sure.”

Morishita said the Economic Recovery Task Force has been in discussion to share ideas on how to further help local businesses during the recovery from COVID-19.

“We’re trying some new ideas out and different things. Some are out of necessity, you know, we’re going to close the streets off for farmers’ markets [because] we need the space, and it’s a good opportunity to see if that helps the downtown businesses. We’re looking at different initiatives, pathway initiatives, all kinds of things,” he said.

“We know that the campgrounds are really busy with people doing their local vacation. The business community is responding really well to that.”