Do your part, wear a mask, PM says
Trudeau encourages face coverings as way to mitigate any second wave
A second wave of COVID-19 is likely coming, and if Canadians want to avoid more pandemicinduced lockdowns, they need to do their part by wearing masks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday.
Pandemics usually produce more than one surge in infections, Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa, so governments need to be ready to rapidly test people, trace their contacts and isolate positive cases.
But he added that individuals also need to contribute.
“We know there is more to do, and as we reopen, we know that citizens will continue to be extremely vigilant and careful about how they act, because that is going to be a key part of keeping us safe moving forward,” he said.
Canadian authorities have been sending mixed messages on the need for the public to wear masks. Seven weeks ago, chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam told citizens that people who are not sick should not be wearing face masks at all.
Quebec’s director of national health, Dr. Horacio Arruda, was also cool to the idea of widespread, non-medical mask usage through March and most of April. At the time, he said wearing masks can provide a false sense of security and lead people to touch their faces to adjust the mask, increasing the risk of infection.
But now, as economies across the country reopen and people begin spending more time outside and in shops, public health authorities are encouraging everyone — particularly in cities such as Montreal with high infection rates — to wear a mask when physical distancing is not possible.
On Wednesday, Tam recommended Canadians wear nonmedical face masks in public when they aren’t sure they will be able to physically distance.
Ottawa-area resident Crystal Smalldon said people in her city are taking advice from public health officials “very seriously.”
Smalldon runs a Facebook group to help people in her area during the pandemic and recently began communicating with companies in her network that have retooled their operations to make personal protective equipment.
The group has a form that members can use to order and purchase equipment, at cost. She said that since Tam’s news conference on Wednesday, her group has received 16,000 requests for masks.
“I believe that our community understands how important it is to protect other people,” she said in an interview. “If you’re wearing a mask, it’s not about yourself, its about the people around you.”
In Toronto’s west end on Thursday, several people standing in line at big-box stores were wearing masks.
“The last thing I want is to give (COVID-19) to someone else if I have it,” Manny Reilly said. “It’s really not a big deal to wear a mask.”
Mary Johnston said, “I’ve been wearing masks for a while now. It makes you wonder if we all should have been doing this since March. Would that have made a difference?”
Rob Pierce, however, said he’s still considering it.
“It seems like the government has been saying for months that masks don’t help, but now they supposedly do? If it is that important, maybe it should be the law, like the social-distancing rule,” he said.
Tam told reporters in Ottawa Thursday that “this is quite a difficult period” because people are getting fatigued from isolating at home, which can lead them to forget the core public health directives.
“Right now is not the time to forget,” she said.
Canada doesn’t have a particularly high immunity rate from COVID-19, she said, because most of the population has not contracted the virus. That means “there will be susceptible people, and if they reignite a chain of transmission, you have to jump on that really fast,” she said.
“This virus can accelerate really quickly.”
Also Thursday, Trudeau said the federal government is sending $75 million to organizations that help Indigenous people living in urban areas and off reserves through the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than a million Indigenous people live in cities or off reserves, Trudeau said, and they deserve good services that are culturally appropriate. Meanwhile, the Canadian Armed Forces is reporting a dramatic increase in the number of military personnel who have contracted COVID-19 while working in long-termcare facilities in Ontario and Quebec.
A total of 28 service members deployed in such facilities have tested positive for the respiratory illness, the military said in a statement Thursday. That compared with only five who had been found to have caught COVID-19 last week.
Military officials had previously indicated they were only to provide such updated numbers every two weeks. The Armed Forces now says it will publish a daily update, suggesting it expects more cases as service members continue to work in long-term-care homes.
Sixteen of the positive cases reported Thursday were from service members deployed in long-term-care homes in Quebec, the military said, while the other 12 were in Ontario.