City hopes to offer hotel rooms to COVID-19 patients

Free accommodation would be given to those who can’t isolate at home

Toronto officials want to be able to offer free hotel rooms to people contagious with COVID-19 but unable to isolate in their own crowded homes.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s public health chief, made the recommendation in a report released Thursday.

She wants the city to ask provincial and federal officials to help fund a lodging program similar to that of Chicago and New York City.

Newly infected Chicagoans in danger of infecting household members can spend their infection period in a dedicated isolation facility in a hotel, with private single rooms, bath and food.

New Yorkers can also isolate in provided hotel rooms.

Toronto virus hot spots include low-income areas where many people live in crowded circumstances and don’t have room at home to self-isolate.

De Villa told reporters she hasn’t got a cost estimate but, given the risks and costs of ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks, “my sense is it would be worth the investment.”

Mayor John Tory said Ottawa has signalled interest in helping with such a program. He doubted the program would be very costly.

Toronto already has arrangements with hotels to book rooms at favourable rates because it has done so to help relieve crowding in homeless shelters.

Also, the number of infected Torontonians is dropping and people are considered contagious for a finite period, around 14 days.

“It doesn’t have to be incredibly expensive relative to having these people healthy and stopping the spread of the virus to their own family members,” Tory said.

Toronto’s public health board will debate the issue on July 2.

On the first day of Stage 2 reopening for Toronto, de Villa said she continues to be encouraged by COVID-19 indicators for the city. The daily increase in newly recovered patients continues to handily outpace increased infections.

But as Torontonians start to venture back to restaurant patios and hair salons, there was an indication that people remain anxious about the possibility of infections.

The first day of registrations for CampTO, the city’s scaleddown summer camp program for kids aged six to 12, with physical distancing and other virus-control measures, saw parents book less than half the available spots.

Registrations on Wednesday for the Scarborough and Etobicoke/York districts saw, by 4 p.m., less than 6,000 of 13,722 spaces reserved.

Registration for the Toronto/ East York, West Toronto/York and North York districts starts Thursday at 7 a.m.

Tory said if attendance remains low, the eight-week camps, including dance, drama, music, arts and crafts and active games, will proceed with any changes required.

“Probably some people … are holding back because they’re a little nervous about their kids going to school in the fall, or going to child care, or going to summer camps,” Tory said, “because we know so little about this virus and its behaviour.”