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OUTBREAK: All contagion cases in the municipality are linked to the local patio. Photograph: Hallgeir Vågenes / VG
The municipality of Hyllestad in western Norway has 24 new cases of infection on Tuesday. This means that they now have 80 confirmed infected.
The 24 new ones that have now been registered infected are connected to the Havyard shipyard in Leirvik in Sogn, reports the Hyllestad municipality on its website. Previously, 56 cases of infection had been identified.
The Hyllestad municipality has closed the yard after infection monitoring shows that all cases can connect there.
About half of Havyard’s 400 employees are foreign-contracted workers. Most of those infected are foreign workers at the shipyard, according to NTB.
Havyard is still closed and will be closed for another week. Now a final decision has not been made, but I hope it will happen, says Hyllestad Municipality Mayor Kjell Eide (Labor).
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Here, every tenth inhabitant is quarantined
Although all those infected in the municipality may be linked to the outbreak in the courtyard, the mayor will not say that they are in control.
– We cannot have full control in a pandemic, but we have a certain overview. There are still some challenges to address this.
He points out that many of the employees come from abroad and often live in barracks. Those who are now infected must isolate themselves from others to prevent further spread.
– Today we sent 29 people to a corona hotel in Bergen, and we made our own hotel here with 40 beds. So we have 70 seats and we may be able to keep it under control, says Eide.
It does not have an overview of how many are now in quarantine, this is estimated to apply to between 600 and 700 people. With workers from abroad, the number of inhabitants of the municipality is around 1600.
This means that almost half of the municipality is in quarantine.
He praises the shipyard’s management and believes that the cooperation between them and the municipality has worked well.
– They do the best they can, but it is demanding. They do a great job of getting people moving, says the mayor.
Mostly young
Things should go well with the 80s who have now been confirmed infected.
– We have not been notified that there are sick people. It is mainly the young who are infected, but we make sure that we do not spread the infection to the nursing home. You have to be very careful with that, the mayor believes.
Among the restrictions they have introduced are requirements for an agreement to enter the town hall and restrictions on visits to the nursing home.
– We have not yet had infection problems in nursing homes, but there is a strict regime to ensure that it does not happen, he says.
All the shipyard’s employees have already been tested once, but the mayor says they are considering another round of testing.
Critical of the rules
Several municipal doctors in industrial municipalities in western Norway now say they are highly critical of foreign workers being able to go directly to work after the first negative test result. They fear several major outbreaks elsewhere as a result of the rules, writes NRK.
On Monday, Mayor Eide in Hyllestad demanded that the government consider stricter rules for labor immigration to the industry.
However, Health Minister Bent Høie rejects it saying that it would have “very significant negative consequences for many key companies in Norway”. He also believes that several smaller municipalities along the coast would be severely affected by it, according to NRK.
