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The owners of a popular Co Donegal restaurant have begged other businesses to take Covid seriously after nine staff members tested positive for the disease.
The neighborhood-winning Burrito Loco Mexican restaurant closed its doors last Thursday as a precautionary measure after a family member of a staff member tested positive.
Surprisingly, the majority of the restaurant staff on Letterkenny’s Port Road did not show mild symptoms or did not show any symptoms.
But the owners have confirmed that currently nine employees have tested positive.
A message on the restaurant’s Facebook page confirmed: “I can confirm that today we are in 9 positive cases. We want to be as transparent as possible and share our journey to show other workplaces or groups how we addressed this and how it happened.”
“All staff had no or mild symptoms except one who is still feeling ill. We have all been in contact with the Public Health Authority and are fully cooperating with their track and trace teams.”
The owners revealed that once they received news of a positive case, they called all staff at 9am last Friday and took temperature checks.
All were shown to be normal and all staff members contacted their GPs for advice.
“We managed to get 90% of the staff tested in 2 hours and the rest was done the next day. In our heart, we believed that we would reopen on Monday, however this was a process that we had to go through to make sure it was safe for everyone to return to work. “
The restaurant owners said they believe the initial outbreak came from a staff member who complained of being exhausted but did not show any Covid symptoms such as persistent coughing, high temperatures, etc.
The owners wrote “Four days later, two other staff members had cold symptoms, a stuffy nose and some aches, but nothing to indicate Covid symptoms. The staff felt it was a cold and within a day or two he felt normal again. .
“Three days later, we closed Burrito Loco on the news of a positive case from one of the parents. In total, the virus took 8 days to spread through our staff.”
The restaurant said they would like to emphasize that they are very happy to have made the decision to close.
“Most of our staff belong to a younger age group and did not show the easily recognizable symptoms that we were looking for, this is advice that I would like to share in other workplaces due to some information that conflicts with the government councils.
“Particularly at this time of year, and with kids back to school, colds seem to be the norm and right now we think that’s what we were dealing with last week at Burrito Loco,” they added.
They added that just for the confirmed positive case, they may not have been closed.
“This shows that we must take seriously any information we receive from the track and trace teams and the work they are doing to prevent the spread of the virus. I would like to thank a few people who also guided and assisted us in this journey. Thank you, Dr. Scally, the lovely nurses at the test center, and the patient and considerate staff in tracking and tracing the PHA.
“Also, I would like to thank our Burrito Loco customers, their kind words of support really helped a lot when they first heard that they entered the Covid zone and to be fair the concern settles quickly.
“I also want to give a special thank you to my staff here, they understood from the first minute that they needed to show calm and maturity when they heard the news and they have been very cooperative at every stage.”
Online editors
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