Important Update from Debian IT – COVID-19 Precautions

The following is an update on a situation that has occurred in our downtown office tower.

Our building management has advised us that The Visual College of Art & Design (VCAD), which is located in our building, has a student that returned earlier this week from travel and was potentially in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. That student is now in self-isolation and is being tested for COVID-19 and awaiting results.

As a precaution, the Debian IT team is now working from home, and the building where our office is located is being sanitized by building management. At this time, the Canadian Public Health Agency has assessed the risk level as low and, to date, there are no cases presumed or confirmed with any of the students, our staff, or any of the other tenants in the building.

Our support service to our clients continues uninterrupted as we had anticipated that this was a potential scenario that would happen during the course of the outbreak. We planned for and created a COVID-19 office closure plan two weeks ago, which is now being executed. Our other office locations in Red Deer, Edmonton, Toronto, and Sydney, NS remain unaffected.

We continue to monitor and assess the situation as this global COVID-19 outbreak plays out, following guidance from provincial health authorities, Public Health Canada, and Global Affairs Canada. We will take all reasonable precautions, prioritizing the health and safety of our clients and team members. In the event that any team members exhibit any form of illness that resembles COVID-19 or the common cold/flu, they are asked to stay home, self isolate, and seek advice on further actions from health authorities.

I have attached the latest version of our COVID-19 and Impact on I.T. infographic which was sent out in an email to all of our clients last week that provides further considerations that you may wish to take for your business. Since this was sent out, we have received numerous requests to assist our clients with remote access capabilities for their staff. We are now scheduling the projects as they come in and the timing for getting these tasks completely are dependent on what is currently already in place and what needs to be done to enable broader remote access capabilities.

We have prepared some resources regarding COVID-19 that you may find useful: