Burnaby contractor worries staff working in Whistler won’t get access to COVID vaccine

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Some people who say they can prove they are working in Whistler are worried they won’t be allowed to book a COVID-19 vaccine appointment this week.

On Sunday, the province announced all adults who live or work in the resort town are eligible for COVID-19 vaccines. The two-week immunization program is aimed at getting things under control in the municipality, which has been a hot spot for the virus.

Sean Pepper, a site supervisor for a contractor renovating a hotel in the village, says he’s already been told his crew of nearly 40 employees may not qualify because their company is based in Burnaby.

“I am worried my workers will be up here and maybe might come back down to their places in the Lower Mainland for a weekend to see their families. They can get infected here and then spread it into communities across the Lower Mainland,” he said.

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Pepper says his team has proper COVID-19 protocol measures in place, but there is still a risk.

“We have N-95 masks, they do social distancing, I keep them in separate quadrants while they’re on the worksite,” said Pepper, who works for Incarus Consulting Corp. “We go through a lot, but nothing’s perfect. There’s been shutdowns of other job sites because they weren’t handled properly. Accidents happen. I’m just worried about it.”

He tells us a site manager he approached at the Whistler Conference Centre, which is now serving as a vaccine clinic, told him his crew doesn’t qualify because they are temporary workers.

“We are working here. We are living here,” Pepper said. “If somebody got a job working in Whistler and they obviously live somewhere else, they could get a pay stub and they could get vaccinated, even though they’re only going to be here for one month. We’re here for a quarter of a year.”

Noting he understands Vancouver Coastal Health needs to verify who’s eligible, he says he’s checking with the health authority to see if his team can be considered staff of the hotel they are renovating.

A spokesperson for the Resort Municipality of Whistler says there is a process in place for situations like this.

“There’s an email address for people to submit their situation and those requests are being reviewed daily. The contractor/employees working at the hotel would likely be one of those,” they write in an email.

The weekend announcement of the Whistler mass vaccination plan came as the Howe Sound Corridor recorded the highest case rate in any community since the start of the pandemic.

“There are 400 new cases this last week in the corridor. The majority of those are in Whistler,” said Dr. Penny Ballem, who is heading up the province’s vaccine rollout.

Ballem noted this is the third surge in Whistler since January.

“We’ve used aggressive public health measures to try to manage them,” she said.

“This one is particularly severe, and it is persistent. We’re at a place now where we’ve got to get better containment of this surge.”

With files from Lisa Steacy