One thing the states of emergency in Timmins and Moosonee have accomplished is getting military-style help managing the ongoing COVID-19 situation.
Team Rubicon Canada is in the region to help set up and establish isolation centres and pop-up vaccination events.
Chief administrative officer for the Cochrane District Social Services Administration Board (CDSSAB), Brian Marks, says Team Rubicon will help support isolation centres in hotels with delivery of food, prescriptions and other needs.
“We just needed help being able to coordinate the logistics and we don’t want hotel administration to really have to deal with that, because that’s not their job either,” he notes.
Isolation centres are in Timmins, Moosonee, Hearst, Kapuskasing and Cochrane. Marks says they’re are for anyone who is COVID-positive or in a household where one or more people are positive.
“We don’t split hairs. We take our direction from the Porcupine Health Unit,” Marks explains. “If people are in contact with them, and the health unit says ‘Okay, you need to safely isolate someplace else, then those are the people that we would be working with.”
TEAM RUBICON CANADA
Team Rubicon is a volunteer disaster response organization. Incident management team chief Eric Goodwin says it’s led by military veterans and includes first responders and specially trained civilians.
Potentially, it’s in this region for two weeks. Goodwin says it intends to fill gaps and relieve overworked front-line workers dealing with the pandemic.
“Once we fill those gaps, then there is succession planning that’s in place in order to turn responsibilities back over the communities, once the emergency subsides,” Goodwin outlines. One factor taken into account is the status of the virus. “The number of COVID cases is a determinant whether or not we actually remain with the community or we start to demobilize ourselves.”