Angela Whitcomb* was sent home on Thursday, April 9 from her job at the Portmore, St Catherine, branch of Alorica, the business process outsourcing (BPO) firm at the centre of the sudden increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Jamaica.
The following day, her employers confirmed, in a memo to staff, that one of her colleagues had tested positive for the dreaded coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and that operations there would be temporarily halted to allow for deep cleaning and sanitisation of the facility.
The young woman, who resides in St Catherine with her mother and four-week-old sibling, said that by Saturday, April 11 she was tested for the virus. Five days later, according to her, the result came back positive.
“I was scared,” Whitcomb admitted.
But what followed next has left her even more distressed and perplexed.
“The Ministry of Health called and said my result came back positive and they would call me and tell me when is the pickup date,” she told The Sunday Gleaner on Friday, April 17, alluding to possible isolation at a government facility.
“But I have to be the one calling them about the pickup date, and up to this moment, nobody has said to me the pickup date will be x y z, at what time or anything like that.”
She charged, “They are helping to spread the virus because there are people in my household who have asthma and such, and nobody seems to care.”
Whitcomb said she was aware of two of her colleagues who were in the same predicament.
Approximately six hours after the interview, after The Sunday Gleaner made contact with the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Whitcomb was picked up by medical workers at midnight Friday.
“It’s okay so far,” she shared yesterday.
Dunstan Bryan, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health & Wellness, indicated during an interview on Friday that he was not aware of the claims by the Alorica employee. “I don’t know, I’ll have to investigate that,” he said.
However, Bryan pointed to the protocol established by the ministry for persons who test positive for COVID-19. As part of the protocol, he said the ministry conducts an assessment of the “home situation” of a confirmed patient to determine whether they can isolate at home.
The assessment, Bryan said, is guided by a number of variables. “Some of those variables will include whether or not the person lives alone, whether or not the person can have, within a household, their own bathroom facility and their own bedroom facility and, therefore, they wouldn’t need to interact with the rest of the household,” he explained.
“If the epidemic moves to the next phase of community spread, we would not have enough beds in hospitals to accommodate those persons who are mildly ill.”
Whitcomb said none of this was ever discussed during her interaction with employees of the health ministry. “Nobody told me this,” she insisted.
The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed locally on March 10, and over the ensuing month, 65 cases were recorded, according to figures from the health ministry. In the past week, however, that number jumped by 108, due largely to at least 84 cases uncovered at Alorica.
Up to late yesterday, the number of confirmed cases locally stood at 173. Five persons have died and 25 have recovered.
Dana White*, another employee at Alorica’s Portmore branch, told The Sunday Gleaner that managers there did not begin to fully implement the Government’s COVID-19 guidelines until close to the Easter holidays.
She recounted one instance earlier this month when, according to her, supervisors at the Portmore branch were alerted by their counterparts at the Kingston branch about a possible visit by health inspectors.
“When they heard that ministry [of health] went to the town location and was headed over to the Portmore site, that’s when they started to run up and dung an say, ‘you need to sit a station apart’,” White recalled.
Further, the Alorica employee said she learnt, from a colleague on another account, that because of the expected site visit by the health inspectors, workers at the Portmore branch were directed to hide in unoccupied rooms.
“It seems like there were too many persons at work on that account that day,” she reasoned.
“I think it was two or three different rooms they tried to push them into and say dem must stay in the rooms. So, if the ministry was to come, they wouldn’t have noticed that so many persons were at work.”
Alorica has denied claims that it was operating in breach of the Government’s COVID-19 guidelines. Chief Medical Officer Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie acknowledged, too, that the company had met the standard established to prevent the spread of the virus.
“We are yet to determine how the infection had spread among the [Alorica] employees. In terms of the audit tool that was in place … [it] indicates that what measures were there were, in fact, adhered to,” Bisasor-McKenzie said.
This pronouncement came after Prime Minister Andrew Holness used a nationally televised press conference to announce that he had asked the commissioner of police and the health ministry to investigate the circumstances under which persons at Alorica contracted the disease with a view to pursuing charges if the Disaster Risk Management Act was breached.
Investigators have declined to provide an update on the probe.
Top criminal defence attorney Peter Champagnie said he would not dismiss Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ directive to the police as wild statements, but cited two factors that would make it challenging to bring criminal charges against Alorica.
According to Champagnie, investigators would need statements from employees and/or other persons of the alleged breaches at the BPO firm, as well as evidence that the infections “arose within the confines of the specific building and not, for instance, from a grouping of people on the outside waiting to go inside”.
“You will always have to prove to the satisfaction of a tribunal that the necessary ingredients [of an offence] have been established. By that I mean you would have to have a statement from someone attesting to the facts,” he argued.
“So, it is not so easy, when you look at it from an evidential point of view, to prove simply so.”
Chief prosecutor Paula Llewellyn sidestepped the issue.
“It’s an unwise prosecutor who makes a comment on matters or issues of fact and law that are not yet before them for examination and scrutiny. I don’t consider myself unwise, so I have no further comment to make,” said Llewellyn, the director of public prosecutions.
Champagnie said maybe the time has come for legislative changes that would make breaches of the orders made under the Disaster Risk Management Act “strict liability offences. That is to say, the prosecution would not have to go through all these various elements to prove a case.”
While acknowledging that employers have a duty of care to ensure that the work environment is “as safe as it can reasonably be”, attorney-at-law Gavin Goffe suggested that a lawsuit against Alorica would also face serious hurdles.
At the top of the list, Goffe said, is that Alorica employees would have a challenge showing that even if the company was in breach of their duty of care, “it was that breach which led to individuals becoming infected” with COVID-19.
“The CMO cleared Alorica and said that they were compliant with the protocol established by the Government. If that is the case, then they wouldn’t have a case against anybody,” he reasoned.
However, Goffe said that could change with allegations that employees were instructed to hide in a room at the Portmore offices as part of an attempt to deceive health inspectors about the number of persons who were actually at the facility.
“If that, in fact, happened and you could somehow trace the spread of the virus to that particular deceptive act, then yes, I think you could have a case against them in that instance,” he explained.
* Names changed to protect identity.