HALIFAX — On Friday afternoon, the Atlantic Superstore in Bedford closed suddenly after an employee tested positive for COVID-19. After a deep cleaning, the store reopened at its usual time the next morning.

A lot went on between the time the Superstore learned about the case and when it reopened, and Mark Boudreau gave Huddle a glimpse into what that time looked like.

Boudreau is the director of corporate affairs for Loblaw Atlantic, the company that owns the Superstore chain of grocery stores.

He says that, with about 200,000 employees across the country, Loblaws knew it would eventually see COVID-19 cases spring up amongst its workers. So, it already had a plan in place for what to do when it finally happened.

“We knew that eventually, this situation would arise where someone would test positive,” Boudreau says.

Part of that plan was to temporarily close stores where employees tested positive for the virus, even though no one would have required it. So, when the Bedford store closed Friday afternoon Boudreau says it was part of a plan that was already in place.

“Nobody was telling us we need to shut the store. But we decided in advance that, you know what, sometimes perception is reality… and some customers might say, ‘how could you stay open when you found this out?’,” he says.

On March 27, the day that plan went into place, Boudreau says things moved fairly quickly.

The employee, who for privacy reasons Boudreau didn’t identify, had already been home for a few days by the time the positive test came through. Once it did, the employee let their bosses know.

At around noon on March 27 Superstore confirmed the positive COVID-19 test with Nova Scotia health officials. Shortly after, management announced over the PA system in the Bedford store that they were closing.

Anyone already in line was asked to finish paying for their groceries. Meanwhile, staff walked the aisles asking customers to leave their carts and exit the store.

According to Boudreau, the store closed about an hour after Superstore received confirmation of the positive COVID-19 test.

That same day, Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer of Health confirmed that the infected employee wasn’t a cashier or other front-line worker, so the risk to the public was minimal.

Boudreau says that all Superstore employees will have some contact with customers, but that in the case of the infected employee that contact was minimal.

About 160 employees work at the Bedford Superstore. Those that came into close contact with the infected employee are at home self-isolating. Boudreau did not say how many are taking that step.

Once the Bedford store was closed Friday afternoon management brought in a “huge crew” of cleaners to clean and disinfect everything.

A professional cleaning company was brought in to direct the cleaning, and they bolstered by help from about 15 store employees.

“We know that cleaning company, they’re experts… so we kind of allowed them to take the lead and do the cleaning and the employees took additional recommendations from them on where and how they could do more.”

The entire store was sanitized “from top to bottom,” in a process that had cleaners on site until about 3 a.m.

The next morning the store opened at its usual time, fully sanitized.

“There probably wasn’t a safer place in the country to buy food than the Bedford Superstore Saturday morning,” Boudreau says.