An employee of a second nail salon in Kingston, Ont., has tested positive for COVID-19, according to Kingdom Nails & Spa.
“Although we have passed all regulations and did not violate [any] safety measures, we feel that it is our responsibility to ensure that this will not happen again,” said a Facebook post by the salon.
The employee tested COVID-19 positive on Saturday, and the spa will now remain closed until the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Public Health (KFLA) region allows it to reopen.
“We are very sorry that this has happened and hope no one has been affected by this,” Kingdom Nails & Spa said in its online statement. “We appreciate all of our customers and would not exist without your ongoing support.”
The news comes after an outbreak was declared at Binh’s Nail and Spa in Kingston on Thursday. According to CBC, there have been 21 cases linked to the facility.
On Friday, health officials said that six employees were among the diagnosed. The outbreak has led to over 500 people being asked to self-isolate and get tested in the KFLA region because they visited the salon after it reopened June 12 as part of Stage 2 of Ontario’s reopening plan.
Binh’s nail salon wasn’t cleaning properly between sessions and also not following two-metre physical distancing rules, according to health officials. Workers wore masks, but that wasn’t always the case with customers. On Friday, KFLA health officials made masks mandatory in indoor public places.
It’s unclear at this point if the employee at Kingdom Nails & Spa had any connection to Binh’s.
Kingston previously went through a stretch of no active cases, after all 63 of its patients had recovered. The KFLA public health website has not updated its statistics since Friday, when there were a total of 79 cases. Since then, Ontario’s Ministry of Health has reported eight cases in KFLA (five on Saturday, three on Sunday), but the region’s total case count is listed at 80.
