Hatters told to stay vigilant as focused effort starting to work

Keep it up, Hatters, it’s starting to work, was the message from the head of the city’s emergency management office to Hatters at Monday night’s council meeting.

Emergency management director Merrick Brown told council in a scheduled update on the pandemic that after several weeks of more strict adherence to social distancing and other measures in the community, case numbers are trending lower and could see further improvement.

“This has been very tough — it’s difficult, with a lot of pain, right now — but we will get through this and see decreases,” he said.

City council passed a mask bylaw for businesses and public buildings on Dec. 2, days after the province called for people to voluntarily limit their social and non-essential contacts with each other.

The next week, more stringent measures were put in place as health officials grappled with rising numbers throughout the province.

Locally, the number of active cases has fallen over the two weeks — from 113 on Dec. 2 down to 70 on

Tuesday, but that is due to previously diagnosed cases moving to the “recovered” stage. The number of new cases is still higher than it was in the summer and early fall, with between five to 10 new cases added daily over the last two weeks (though just two new cases were reported Tuesday).

That’s likely due to more people giving greater weight to health orders, said Brown.

“If we can continue doing what we’ve been doing for the next two weeks, we will see a decreases in the data,” said Brown. “There is light at the end of the tunnel.”