The City of Hamilton's public health department says they "aren't going to be able to share any other details" after an employee at Waterdown's TD Bank tested positive for COVID-19, despite repeated requests for information from the Review around when customers at the bank may potentially have been at risk.

Although TD said staff at the bank are self-isolating for two weeks, public health said, "In general, customers of the bank do not need to be self-isolating."

The bank has been closed since March 16, and TD confirmed the positive case on March 17. In a statement, Carla Hindman, TD’s manager of corporate and public affairs said the company was following guidance from public health authorities.

It is unclear if public health has contacted all potential contacts in the Waterdown bank case.

TD did not indicate when the employee tested positive, or when customers may have been exposed.

“We are working with public health and they will be directly contacting any customers who they believe could be at risk,” Hindman said. “The branch will reopen when public health advises it is safe to do so.”

In a separate interview with the Review, Hamilton's associate medical officer of health Dr. Bart Harvey said while the public health department does have the ability to issue a public notice about when people may have been in a public place at the same time as an individual infected by COVID-19, the effectiveness of the measure is limited due to the number of cases across the province.

“We would have so many announcements like that, that it would be a din,” said Harvey. 

Using the scenario of a hypothetical COVID-19 positive case at a bank, Harvey explained there are different levels of contact someone may have had with an infected individual.

“If they went to a teller and asked them to bring their bank book up-to-date or they wanted to deposit a cheque, so they’re there for 60 seconds, 90 seconds, we’ll certainly want to give them a heads up,” he explained. “At minimum, we’ll want folks to monitor their symptoms for 14 days, in this case after they’ve been in the bank.”

However, Harvey said in the case of a close contact, such as a one-hour meeting in a closed office, public health would advise that the individual should self-isolate for 14 days.

“If they’ve been feeling sick, developed symptoms, then we’ll want them to call us back, call Telehealth Ontario,” he said. “We want them to get assessed and if they need to, get tested.”

Harvey stressed that a difficulty with the process is that public health is often asking individuals about their contacts and whereabouts three to four days in the past.

For example, in the case of an infected person eating at a fast-food restaurant, he said public health would reach out to the business and explain the time in question, and tell their employees who were working at that time to monitor their symptoms.

If any were feeling ill, they would be advised to contact public health, and they would then be interviewed.

Harvey said the goal of the measures is to prevent free community spread — in this case where the virus makes its way throughout the population and is not limited to people who have travelled or had contact with people who have travelled.

Hamilton confirmed its first such case March 17.

“I think unfortunately, just the nature of this virus, we’re not going to be able to hold that off forever,” Harvey said, “but we’ll make every effort that we can to try to minimize it and then kind of go from there.”

In cases where people do test positive, he said public health will start looking for contacts in the 24 hours before the person began to feel sick.

“We’ll get them to walk through from that period of time forward — ‘What do you remember you did? Where were you? Who did you interact with? What did you do with them?’” he said. “Those close, long prolonged contacts, we’ll reach out to those folks and look at that.”

However, Harvey said in many cases people know those who they had close, prolonged contact with and reached out with them personally.

“They’re picking up the phone, giving them a call and saying, ‘Just wanted to let you know, I got sick, I tested positive for COVID-19, you may want to reach out to public health.”

Harvey said each public health department in the province is doing the best they can, in terms of reaching out to contacts, but noted it depends on the volume of calls they get.

“I can’t even imagine what my colleagues in Toronto are doing, because they’re well over 100 cases, so each one of those cases would mean an investigation,” he said. “We only have a finite staff and we’re doing the best we can to try to keep the lid on this as long as we can to try to elongate, flatten that epidemic curve so that we try to avoid totally overwhelming our health-care system.”