COVID-19: All child-care centres in Ontario allowed to reopen Friday, with public health restrictions
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What you need to know, at a glance:
- All child-care centres in the province will be allowed to reopen Friday, with strict public health measures that must be followed
- Summer day camps will also be allowed to open “as part of Stage 2”
- Ontario reported 230 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday
- The City of Ottawa will launch new day camps starting July 6 on the condition provincial regulations have relaxed to allow day camps for kids
- The federal government is launching an online PPE hub to help businesses looking for personal protective equipment to connect with suppliers
- Ottawa Public Health reported three new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, as well as two new deaths since the previous day
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Tuesday all child-care centres in the province will be allowed to reopen Friday, subject to public health restrictions.
Ford said the plan will help support parents who are returning to work as Ontario’s economy gradually reopens.
There will a limit of 10 children and staff per group in the centres, and “more screening and more cleaning,” said Ford, similar to the restrictions currently in place for child-care centres operating for the families of essential workers.
All children and staff will be screened prior to entry. All toys that could spread germs will be removed. Daily attendance records to support contact tracing will be required.
Just one confirmed case of COVID-19 would shut down a child-care facility for cleaning and testing, said Ford.
The province has worked with experts from Toronto’s SickKids hospital on the plan to restart child care, according to Education Minister Stephen Lecce. He added home-based care will continue to be provided during this period.
“To underscore our zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance,” Lecce said the province is going to increase penalties by 50 per cent and increase child-care inspections.
Provincial emergency child care that has been offered to first responders during the pandemic is set to be phased out at the end of June, said Lecce, although he added priority will be given to those first responders for the newly opened child-care spaces.
Parents who decide not to use their current child-care space will not lose that spot or be charged, said Lecce.
Summer day camps will also be allowed to open “as part of Stage 2,” said Ford, without providing a specific date.
Ontario reported 230 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, a drop from the previous day’s case total that already had Ontario’s health minister speaking positively.
The province reported 243 new cases on Monday, a data point Christine Elliott described as “very good” at an afternoon press conference.
It’s a marked improvement over cases totals in the 300s and 400s seen over the last two weeks. However, the number of tests Ontario completed in the previous day – 13,509 – was lower than it has been recently.
Fourteen additional deaths were also recorded by the province Tuesday. There are currently 600 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Ontario, including 116 in ICU and 88 on ventilators.
The number of active outbreaks in long-term care homes across the province dropped from 78 to 73 in the last day, as did active cases among LTC residents and staff.
Local
Ottawa Public Health reported three new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, as well as two new deaths since the previous day. That brings the city’s total confirmed cases to 2,009, although 84 per cent are now resolved.
Thirty-one Ottawa residents with COVID-19 are currently hospitalized, said OPH.
The City of Ottawa will launch new day camps modified for the COVID-19 pandemic starting July 6 on the condition provincial regulations have relaxed to allow day camps for kids.
After cancelling previously planned camps, the city said Tuesday that Camp Summer Fun is designed to follow provincial guidelines and advice from Ottawa Public Health, including smaller groups, screening protocols, and encouraging campers to wear cloth masks when physical distancing is difficult.
There are currently 13 ongoing outbreaks of COVID-19 in local institutions, mostly long-term care and retirement homes. The most recent outbreak began June 3 at the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre – just over a week after the first outbreak at the LTC home was declared over. This second outbreak has seen five confirmed cases among residents and staff, and one resident death.
In eastern Ontario, the Leeds, Grenville & Lanark Public Health Unit is reporting 351 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, while the Eastern Ontario Health Unit is reporting 152 and the Renfrew County and District Health Unit is reporting 28.
National
The federal government is launching an online PPE hub to help businesses looking for personal protective equipment to connect with suppliers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Tuesday.
The prime minister also announced the government has signed two new contracts to bolster safety supplies for front-line workers. A supplier in Dorval, Que. will manufacture 1.2 million medical gowns, and a distributer in Brampton will be providing shoe covers and disinfectant wipes, Trudeau said.
Trudeau added some 160,000 litres of hand sanitizer arrived by boat in Vancouver over the weekend, and seven more ships are set to arrive in the coming days.
Trudeau noted his government has shared proposals with the opposition parties to further expand pandemic aid, including direct support to people with disabilities, support for more workers through the wage subsidy, and added flexibility to certain judicial timelines, such as those around bankruptcy.
“We will also strive to make CERB payments more flexible, while making sure that those who knowingly and wrongfully claim the CERB face consequences,” said Trudeau. “Discussions are ongoing, but I fully expect us to be able to work well with the opposite to deliver this important support to Canadians.”
The prime minister said Canadians who mistakenly applied the CERB will simply have to pay it back.
Canadians are increasingly wearing protective face masks as they emerge from months of isolating at home to curb the spread of COVID-19, a new poll suggests.
And it suggests that fear of a second wave of infections as bad as or worse than the first wave may behind their increased caution.
Fifty-one per cent of respondents to the Leger and Association for Canadian Studies survey said they have worn masks to go grocery shopping — up eight percentage points in one week. Forty-five per cent said they’ve worn masks to go to a pharmacy (up seven points), 17 per cent at work (up four points), 14 per cent on public transit (up four points) and 12 per cent to go for walks (up two points).
The increased wearing of masks reflects the fact that restrictions on physical distancing are slowly easing across the country, with more Canadians venturing out of their homes and going back to work. But Leger executive vice-president Christian Bourque said it may also reflect fear of a second wave of the deadly coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
In other polling news, a new survey conducted by Angus Reid suggests that although Canadians are looking forward to eating out again after nearly three months of lockdown life, only 18 per cent plan to take a seat in a restaurant dining room as soon as possible. Thirty-eight per cent expect their first visit to take place at some point over the summer, and 33 per cent intend to eat out after the second wave of COVID-19 has passed.
Canadian Blood Services says the resumption of elective surgeries following months of COVID-19 lockdown is putting a worrisome drain on the national blood supply. While the number of donors that can be seen at blood clinics is limited to respect physical distancing restriction, the agency has been able to keep pace with demand after the cancellation of elective surgeries across Canada reduced the requirement for blood.
But Peter MacDonald, Director of Donor Relations Canadian Blood Services, says the demand is now almost back to what it was before the pandemic began.
Quebec
Premier François Legault started his Tuesday press conference by noting that Quebec had passed a grim milestone – the province’s death toll topped 5,000. “That’s a lot of people, a lot of Quebecers,” Legault said, offering his condolences. “We must do better in the future.”
Asked for his message to those who have lost family members, he answered: “The message I have is that I’m sorry – I’m sorry for the decisions that have been taken or not taken for the last 10, 20 years.”
Quebec recorded 138 new cases of COVID-19 and 45 additional deaths Tuesday. There have been 561 cases in the Outaouais region to date, and 27 deaths.
— With files from Postmedia and The Canadian Press
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