WINDSOR, ONT. -- Officials are looking at employers to make changes as reported COVID-19 cases among migrant worker population spikes.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit reported 34 new cases among migrant workers Tuesday, bringing the total to more than 200 and nearly one fifth of the total reported COVID-19 cases in the region.

Leamington Mayor Hilda MacDonald says the whole community has a responsibly to respond.

“This is community transmission, these are grown people, it’s hard to force people to stay in place,” she said. “I do believe they’ve tried to the best of their ability, but you cannot keep every door locked and closed.”

Officials launched a more targeted approach Tuesday with voluntary testing of the region’s nearly 9,000 person migrant worker community at the Nature Fresh Recreation Centre in Leamington.

Erie Shores HealthCare said Highline Mushrooms was the first grower in the region to utilize the Agrifood Worker Assessment Centre, sending more than 100 workers on a voluntary basis to be tested and assessed.

Some say testing, combined with contact tracing is not enough.

“The solution is common sense. It has to be combined with other measures in order to be able to counter the spread of the virus,” said Santiago Escobar, the national representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Escobar believes the root of the problem isn’t in the workers entering the community, it’s the conditions they work and live under.

He believes quotas need to be removed, workers need more PPE, and the enforcement of proper physical distancing needs to be ramped up.

“Migrant workers are at a high risk of contracting the virus because they’re not able to practice physical distancing in their overcrowded living conditions, where they are sharing the space with in some cases 20-30 workers,” said Escobar. “They also have to work in close proximity to each other.”

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Amhed confirms the new cases reported today have a clear link.

“Most of these cases that we’re reporting today are linked to a shared accommodation,” he said.

Kingsville Mayor Nelson Santos says he’s visited the bunkhouses and believes workers are well-treated by employers in the temporary foreign workers program.

“They have adjusted, they have made changes from what they had in the past, so they made progress,” he said.

Mayor MacDonald admits the pandemic has exposed issues that will now have to be viewed under a new light.

“I agree, there are probably conditions which are less than ideal, that much like long-term care, we’re going to have to change our method of operation as far as sanitization,” she said. “But living conditions, living quarters are likely going to have to change.”

CTV News reached out to the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers Association for comment but did not received a response by news time.

Dr. Ahmed indicated he will be providing a more in-depth analysis of the health unit’s findings related to migrant workers later this week.