The Examiner’s Newsmaker 2020: COVID-19
COVID-19 is The Examiner’s Newsmaker of the Year. Nothing dominated the news more than the coronavirus and our response to it.
For the first several weeks of COVID-19’s spread, our coverage was largely handled by the wire services that provide provincial, national and international news to our readers.
That changed on March 6, when Examiner reporter Joelle Kovach wrote about the community’s early reaction to the possibility that COVID-19 had arrived in Peterborough.
That story was about how 24 local postal workers were refusing to enter Canada Post’s Rye Street building. A manager who had returned from a trip to Asia was sick (not with COVID-19) and staffers were concerned that they could spread illness through deliveries to seniors’ homes and schools.
At the same time, a trip to Italy for Holy Cross and St. Peter students was cancelled, as the Canadian government had advised people to avoid travelling to the country. International trips for Lakefield College School and other area students were also called off, and travel agencies started hearing from people who were concerned about their March break plans.
All of this was shared with readers on that Saturday. Within days, COVID-19 would dominate our headlines as the province took quick steps to slow the spread of the virus, to “flatten the curve” in order to prevent an overload of demand on hospitals.
In those early weeks, our coverage focused on the practical: what was open, what was closed, where to access necessary services. We shared stories about sports, including the Petes, shutting down, live entertainment and gambling put on hold and local playgrounds closing.
Key coverage included details on financial relief programs offered by governments, steps taken by local health-care workers to begin testing for the virus, and the support being
shown to front-line workers by the public.
March break arrived, and didn’t end. Elementary and secondary students stayed home for the rest of the school year. Post-secondary students soon vacated campuses.
Offices closed, and “Zoom” became a verb as people quickly learned to work via online video. Others found themselves laid off, with the federal government offering $2,000 a month to people whose jobs were affected by the virus.
Peterborough-area residents began to adapt to a new reality that included masks, physical distancing, lineups outside the stores that remained open and food delivery taking over for dining out. Hardest to handle was the suspension of visits to loved ones, particularly those in long-term-care homes and hospitals.
Peterborough Public Health began offering daily updates as COVID-19 started showing up in the area, which continued as we slowly moved out of the early stages of lockdown. There was still uncertainty; Golfers planned for a modified approach to the game, while the Lakers lacrosse team was still hoping to play its 2020 season, and parents were hoping schools would reopen in September.
Long-term-care homes were a particular focus of our coverage, as the virus posed a threat to vulnerable seniors. There were outbreaks — defined as one case or more — in several local facilities early on, and they continued over the course of 2020. This led to outpourings of community support for residents and staff, often in the form of drive-by parades.
We shared stories about how you were dealing with the change, or how you were inspiring others. We wrote about clubs and charities adapting, marginalized people struggling with access to services and businesses opening, closing or adapting to the new reality. We covered the decision, and your reaction, to changes to city transit and downtown lane closures. But as the case count rose, we knew our coverage would at some point include stories about people lost to the virus.
The first and second local deaths from COVID-19 came in April. At one point, we reported that local funeral home directors were preparing for a “surge” of local deaths, but that didn’t happen — there were five deaths in 2020, fewer than other cities.
By summer, things had opened up, with new restrictions in place as health officials and governments studied the virus and adapted their approach to dealing with it.
This brought with it a flood of people from the GTA heading to the Kawarthas to enjoy the outdoors, something we embrace most years, but posed new problems in 2020 as we maintained a low number of cases while the virus surged in Toronto and area.
Many people hoped COVID-19 would go away over the summer. That didn’t happen, and December saw a return to last spring’s lockdown conditions as a second wave of the virus started to spread.
However, there is hope, with new vaccines starting to be available and widespread inoculation possible by the summer. We will continue bringing you daily updates as the efforts to tame the virus continue, with the hopes that COVID-19 doesn’t repeat as the 2021 Newsmaker of the Year.