City tells restaurants and salons to get ready to reopen
Mayor urges businesses to be prepared for when province lifts lockdown
Restaurants and personal-care salons in the city are being asked to prepare for re-opening, even as the number of new COVID-19 infections remains close to 200 a day in Toronto and just under 350 in Ontario.
“To be clear, businesses are not permitted to begin operating yet … so you can’t go get your nails done or sit down for a meal at a restaurant, not yet,” Mayor John Tory said at Friday’s COVID-19 update from city hall.
Toronto Public Health on Friday issued guidelines for reopening, which include requiring businesses to maintain social-distancing practices, including spacing out tables in restaurants, installing Plexiglas barriers where necessary and establishing practices to ensure staff stay home when ill and that customers who are ill are denied entry, so as not to infect others.
Businesses are also being asked to keep logs of customers and staff when they re-open, so if someone does become ill with COVID-19, those who may have been exposed to the virus can quickly be notified through contact tracing by Toronto Public Health.
Tory said city staff will be communicating directly with businesses over the next week, either individually or through local Business Improvement Associations, to ensure that resumption of service can happen as quickly as possible once the provincial lockdown orders are lifted.
There are about 8,000 restaurants in Toronto and 3,350 personal-care shops, including hair and nail salons.
Except for restaurant take-out and delivery, the businesses have been closed since midMarch.
Toronto Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa reported at the press conference that the number of new infections in Toronto rose by 198 in 24 hours, but it’s not too early for businesses to start preparing to re-open.
“I think it’s important for people to have some hope and recognize that there are some things that can be done at the present time, even though we’re not yet at that point where we are re-opening restaurants for dine-in service or personal services settings like hair stylists and nail salons,” she said.