Nearly 800 employees at Rauma Shipyard have been ordered to be quarantined following a major coronavirus disease at the plant, according to West Coast city officials.
About 160 employees were quarantined last week when Rauma Marine Construction (RMC) ceased operations on Friday due to the outbreak.
At the same time, all sick workers must undergo a coronavirus test before being allowed back to work.
About 1,000 of the yard’s employees have been tested in the past week, of which 240 are positive so far. These people have also been quarantined, but none of them have needed hospital treatment, according to local authorities.
CEO of RMC Jyrki Heinimaa said the company is carefully investigating the situation in collaboration with local health authorities.
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The yard’s operations came to a halt due to Monday’s situation. Decisions on reopening will be made together with the authorities, Heinimaa said.
Mostly foreign workers
Hannu NordqvistThe head of Rauma stated that the city’s shipyard mainly employs foreign workers.
He said about 800 of the yard’s workers were speaking abroad and that efforts to minimize the spread of the coronavirus had been hampered by language barriers and cultural differences, as well as the living conditions of workers.
Employees often live in shared accommodation and travel to work together in groups, which increases the likelihood of the virus spreading, Nordqvist said.
"Their living quarters were not shared, so it is possible that infected people will expose and infect others there," Nordqvist said.
Rauma officials have demanded that RMC and its subcontractors – of which there are several – get the situation under control.
According to Nordqvist, many of the yard’s employees did not initially realize that the quarantine instructions for the coronavirus were legally binding and that non-compliance was illegal.
The company has since updated information on quarantine rules and employees ’own languages, he noted.
RMC: The situation is being monitored
At the same time, shipbuilder RMC announced that it would do its utmost to combat the local outbreak, adding that coronavirus testing and random sampling would continue in the future to prevent a new outbreak when the yard opened.
"In the future, the scheduling of shifts and breaks for workers will be staggered to minimize contact in the dock area," the company said.
Most of the workers tested positive had been asymptomatic carriers of the virus, RMC said.
"Compliance with the instructions is closely monitored by violators [of the rules] are subject to sanctions," the company said.
The city is demanding new rules
At an extraordinary meeting on Sunday night, the Rauma City Social and Health Committee ordered RMC to provide a summary of how it intends to implement the necessary security measures.
The committee limited the gathering of the Rauma crowd to six people for three weeks. In addition, according to the committee, private events should not be organized at all.
Coronavirus infection chains have also been confirmed in two Rauma nursing homes.
According to local data, there were 10 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Saga nursing home and a total of 83 exposures to the virus.
At the same time, one case of coronavirus was confirmed at the city’s Linnavuori service home, where 44 people were exposed to the virus carrier. So far, none of the sufferers have needed hospital treatment.