forest talk
Red light, green light OMICRON LOOKS CERTAIN TO SWEEP across New Zealand over the coming months. Experience overseas suggests this highly infectious COVID-19 variant is going to disrupt supply chains and leave businesses without enough workers to operate, either because they are sick or having to isolate. That means now is the time to make any lastminute improvements to business continuity and worker wellbeing plans, including ways to reduce the spread of the infection and to help workers and businesses recover as quickly as possible. While forestry isn’t currently covered by the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirement, all businesses need to do an assessment of the risks of people being infected at work, says Safetree’s Fiona Ewing. Experience in New Zealand and overseas shows that vaccination remains the most effective way to protect people, businesses and communities. To be specific the Government recommendation that covers forestry is worded: A business can also decide work requires vaccination Outside of Government vaccination mandates, businesses can assess whether specific work in their workplace requires vaccination if a risk assessment identifies this is necessary for work health and safety purposes.
4 NZ LOGGER | February 2022
FORESTRY VACCINATION CASE SCENARIO THE TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEM HAS BEEN IMPLEMENTED AND HOPEFULLY IT HAS YOU THINKING ABOUT HOW WORK SHOULD HAPPEN GOING FORWARD, PREDICITING COVID INFECTIONS COULD HAPPEN BUT PUTTING STOPS IN PLACE TO REDUCE THE RISK. WE KNOW THAT VACCINATION IS OUR BEST SOLUTION AGAINST THE RISK.
A
B
Case X a young forester was out at the night club with the Case C (Covid Infected) last Saturday night so deemed a “close contact” on the Ministry of Health’s tracer scan on Wednesday the next week. Case X had been travelling that week with his crew mates in the confines of the company van to site each day Monday to Wednesday when the contractor receives the news that Case X is a close contact suspect. The whole crew is immediately told to isolate at home as “associated contacts“ and are tested, awaiting results 48 hours later. The business is required to shut down until they are cleared.
2
PAX
8
PAX
C
Further precautions are taken and all the families of these associated crew members go into isolation at home for 48 hours until their crew members results come back.
PAX
D
Tracing back the movements of the crew members and their families if you assume that they had all visited on average 4 places from Monday – Wednesday and the 20 children involved had been to four schools each with 400 pupils. This scenario alone would now effect a mega out break and close many more businesses. Further testing and association to the original case would go far and wide as those 52 people visiting 4 places of interests (assume 35 people at each place) and the schools.
8,800
43
PAX
8,800
Fortunately in this case all the crew were vaccinated and all received negative results. It got them thinking about how work should happen going forward, prediciting this happening and putting stops in place to reduce the risk. By the way we could also have added the truck driver and the supervisor from the forest company that came out to visit twice and then went back to their offices where they could potentially infect more people – that 8,800 could easily have gone to tens of thousands if it had gone the other way!
The Forest Industry Contractors Association’s (FICA) Prue Younger says, “In practical terms I believe that most contractors are working towards mandatory vaccination in their crews”. Ms Ewing adds that while the outdoor nature of harvesting and silviculture operations would appear to reduce the chances of forestry businesses meeting the threshold for a vaccine mandate, companies should be aware that this could be affected by crews travelling long distances together in vehicles. We also need to keep following the ‘golden rules’ that applied to earlier COVID-19 variants, including staying home if sick and getting tested, using the COVID tracer app, keeping your distance from strangers and wearing masks, and keeping plant and vehicles clean, says Ms Ewing. Working and travelling in ‘bubbles’ also means that if someone gets sick, fewer people will have to test and isolate. Safetree’s latest COVID-19 guidance, Forestry Work Under the COVID-19 Protection Framework (Traffic Light System) includes information on
how to assess the risk to workers, put in place controls to protect people (and your business) and what to do if someone at work gets sick (https://safetree.nz/resources/covid-19/). The guide includes links to official information about requirements at different traffic light levels. Safetree’s guide also includes a link to the government’s tool to help businesses decide if they should introduce a vaccine mandate. Under the tool, a business must answer ‘yes’ to at least three out of four questions before it would be reasonable to require vaccination for a particular role. In addition, everyone needs to be prepared for being sick at home, and the Government COVID-19 website has a checklist to download and use to help you prepare (https://covid19. govt.nz/). Advice from FICA on how to navigate the traffic light system and manage COVID-19 infection risk is illustrated in the flyers above. NZL
