BACK TO SCHOOL?
Legault doesn’t rule out a return before May 4
Quebec Premier François Legault said Friday he doesn’t discount the possibility of reopening schools and daycares earlier than the original May 4 target.
“Nothing is decided, but we will follow the results daily,” Legault said at his daily news conference in Quebec City. “We are looking at different scenarios. Once the schools and daycares are reopened, we will be able to restart the economy.”
Legault stressed it will likely be several more days or even weeks before a decision can be made on reopening schools and daycares, but it looks promising.
“We’ve had four or five good days of results, and we will see if it continues and then take the best decision for the public,” he said.
Public health director Horacio Arruda said not only is it possible to bring schools back before the end of the school year, but it could help prevent a more dramatic outbreak in the future.
“We know that young kids don’t get very sick (when they are infected with the virus),” he said. “So the more that they are immunized naturally, the less they will become active vectors for elderly people.”
Legault said if children do go back to school this spring, it will likely be with some distancing measures still in place.
“We know that children are less at risk, but when we do eventually reopen the schools and daycares, we will have to make sure that children don’t go anywhere near their grandparents.”
Legault concluded his opening remarks at his daily news conference with a message of hope for Quebecers as they head into the Easter weekend.
“When we Quebecers unite, there is nothing that can stop us,” he said. “We know that when it’s minus-30 degrees in January, or when it snows in April as it did yesterday, that good times will come. We know that spring will eventually come. That’s what I want to tell Quebecers: Hope is alive; good days are coming.”
Despite the positive message, the situation is still dire in many Quebec seniors’ homes and public long-term care centres.
Legault said transfers toward those centres have officially stopped as of Friday. However, many patients appeared to have been transferred in the last few weeks.
Legault defended the practice, saying it helped free up space in hospitals to deal with the crisis.
“We have stopped doing this, because we have freed up 8,000 beds, so it’s no longer necessary to transfer patients to those centres,” Legault said.
Arruda added if those patients had stayed in hospitals, it’s possible they could have contracted the virus, so it made sense to transfer them.
Seniors’ homes and long-term care centres, known as CHSLDS, have made up the lion’s share of the deaths from COVID -19 in Quebec. However, the province did not have updated figures about the number of dead in those centres on Friday.
Health Minister Danielle Mccann said the centres are going to be getting more resources and more health-care personnel. Among their tasks will be to help make phone calls to family members of people who are in those centres.
“I can reassure families and the public that this is a big priority,” Mccann said. “We have to solve it now.”
Later in the day, the province asked all organizers of festivals and sporting events to cancel their activities through Aug. 31. The government said there will be a need to engage in physical distancing for an “extended period,” even if schools could return by May.
The Rogers Cup, which was scheduled for Aug. 7 to 16, and Evenko, which organizes music festivals at Parc Jean-drapeau — including Osheaga, Îlesoniq and Lasso — said Friday they are evaluating their options.