Business group pushes for reopening
It’s too early despite downward trend in cases in Ontario, experts say
Ontario business owners are eagerly looking for the light at the end of the lockdown tunnel as COVID-19 cases steadily drop each day — but public health experts say we’ve got a long road ahead before the province can safely open its doors again.
COVID-19 cases in Ontario have been trending downward by the day — the province announced 1,958 new cases Monday, down from 2,417 on Sunday and 2,578 last Monday. The Monday before that, Jan. 11, the province reported 3,338 new cases.
But on Sunday, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said it’s too soon to know whether this trend will continue.
“While community-based measures may be starting to take effect in some areas, it is too soon to be sure that current measures are strong enough and broad enough to maintain a steady downward trend across the country,” she said in a statement.
The threat of the new virus variants also looms; one disease forecasting company told the Star that the province could see nearly 4,000 cases a day by the end of March if the new variant that was first detected in the U.K. takes hold and schools reopen as planned.
Peter Juni, scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, said the U.K. variant and South Africa variant are both quite worrying and make it all the more important to stay in a strict lockdown until cases are under control.
“We may be over the hill, but we’re not out of the forest,” he said.
Colin Furness, epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, said the downward case trend combined with mobility data show the lockdown restrictions are working.
But past the short term, he’s less optimistic, especially if the new variants take hold.
“I worry that we’re going to be up to several thousand cases a day, many thousands … if a new variant really takes hold,” he said.
Furness is advocating for widespread testing as a way of loosening the lockdown restrictions.
“I think if businesses want to open, they need to start demanding rapid testing,” he said.
On Jan. 18, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, David Williams, said the province’s daily case count needs to fall below 1,000 before the lockdown measures can be lifted. He added he’d like to see the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units drop below 150.
Andrew Morris, an infectious disease specialist at Sinai Health and University Health Network, said while the downward trend is encouraging, he too would look for more than that before undoing the current restrictions.
Morris would prefer to wait until cases are “very, very low” and then begin reopening bit by bit, beginning with schools.
He agreed that the province should look at “a bunch of factors” before deciding to ease restrictions — not simply the daily case count — such as healthcare capacity, but not just in terms of beds and ventilators.
“I think what we also need to be thinking about is the effects on the workforce,” he said. “It’s not just the numbers.”
Ryan Mallough, the director of provincial affairs, Ontario at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), said the organization is calling on the government to come up with a plan to reopen small businesses at a limited capacity; even by-appointment shopping would be better than nothing, said Mallough.
He added that business owners want to have some kind of certainty, some date or number to look forward to, instead of being surprised with a reopening and scrambling to prepare.
“It has been incredibly difficult for business owners to survive with no in-store customers. And the longer this goes, the more difficult recovery is going to be and, honestly, the more businesses will wind up losing,” said Mallough.
Mallough also noted the ongoing frustration over big-box stores still being allowed to sell non-essential items alongside groceries and essentials, something the CFIB has deemed unfair since the lockdown began.
Juni said the government should be making clear the difference between essential and non-essential, and agreed that the government could also be “more stringent” about that distinction to make the lockdown as effective and fair as possible.
“If feasible, if one is able to distinguish between essential and non-essential parts (of a big-box store), this would make a difference,” he said.
Emily Hogeveen, a spokesperson in the Minister of Finance’s office, said as of 7 a.m. Monday, the province had received around 51,000 applications for the Small Business Support Grant.
Hogeveen said the ministry is aware that many businesses are facing revenue shortfalls and the government is reviewing the program to ensure that it best serves the businesses that need it most.