The Finnish berry industry is reliant on foreign workers who come to pick wild berries from the Finnish forests for the 2-3 month season every year. For the past decade most of those berry pickers have come from Thailand, with around 3000 thais picking berries in the forests this year. Thailand is not doing so well with the current corona virus wave, with the number of cases spiking, and problems with the vaccine rollout meaning only a small percentage of the population has been fully vaccinated.
In Finland, the berry pickers are concentrated in camps close to the areas where the companies intend them to pick berries. Ealy this week, one such camp was tested for covid, with 44 out of the group of 74 berry pickers in the camp
testing positive. Similar outbreaks among thai berry pickers have been discovered in other camps also,
as well as in Sweden where they also recruit thais to come pick wild berries.
Well, let's hope next year's berry pickers don't come across the rotting remains of some of their predecessors in the wild, who collapsed from covid and then died of exposure. Might negatively impact worker morale.