As pandemic worsens, city shuts down outdoor public skating

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Council shut down the open skates for at least the 28-day provincial lockdown.

Ward 10 Coun. Jim Morrison asked about whether other outdoor city facilities like walking trails and toboggan hills should also be restricted to reduce the risk of transmission. People on trails often have little space between them when they pass one another, he said. And on toboggan hills, people congregate at the top waiting to go down.

“Are we fully satisfied this is all we need to do?” Morrison asked.

City CAO Onorio Colucci responded that he’s a regular user of city trails and finds that most people are very good about moving aside and giving others space. As for toboggan hills, he said administration will closely monitor them.

“If we feel there are concerns, we’ll come back to council,” Colucci said. Council has the option to vote by email to quicken the process.

“Clearly, we are not doing well as a region,” Ahmed told council.

“We are already in lockdown, but despite all these lockdown measures there are a number of issues we continue to deal with,” he said, referring to a “large number” of people who are not following the measures, and thereby contributing to the increased cases and spread of the virus.

“As a result of all these cases, we’re seeing all this spillover impact on long-term care homes, retirement homes, our farms as well as our hospital system,” Ahmed said.

Responding to council questions, Ahmed said he believes a “hard lockdown” with even stricter rules than under the current grey-lockdown is needed to bring down the numbers. He cited examples in Europe where hard lockdowns have been successful.

“We definitely want to save more lives, we definitely don’t want to see more hospitalizations and our health-care system overwhelmed with everything we are seeing right now,” he said. “All these examples of other countries are very clear that, hard lockdowns, it works and sometimes these partial measures don’t get you the results people are looking for.”

bcross@postmedia.com