COVID-19: Toronto orders 11 workplaces to close; People 45+ can book vaccines in hot spots

April 27, 2021NOW Staff

A woman in a face mask walks down on the sidewalk in Toronto

Top COVID-19 stories and news

Doug Ford’s mea culpa smells like a cover-up for a government in disarray

Here’s the list of people eligible for vaccines in Phase 2

Here are the rules for Ontario’s new stay-at-home-order

Jill Andrew calls on province to revise list of “essential” dollar store items

4:25 pm Toronto St. Paul’s MPP Jill Andrew is calling on the Ministry of Health to review the list of items deemed “essential” at dollar stores.

“Dollar stores are essential for many – and these restrictions are not equitable,” she tweeted on Tuesday.

In a letter to Health Minister Christine Elliott, Andrew writes that restrictions on what dollar stores can sell during the stay-at-home order is adversely impacting lower-income people, seniors, single parents, people on fixed incomes, injured workers, people experiencing homelessness and people with limited or no access to the internet.

“These stores are vital for many folks who really might not have anywhere else they can afford right now,” she writes.

“The decision to restrict dollar stores has included barring easy access to things like clothing, and kitchen items,” she adds, nothing that many of the products restricted at dollar stores are available to purchase at higher prices at Shoppers Drug Mart.

The province restricted items box stores and discount store under the most recent stay-at-home order. Small business owners had called for the restrictions after chain stores selling essential items such as food and medicine were also allowed to sell items deemed non-essential, such as clothes, school supplies and kitchen supplies, during previous lockdowns.

I’m writing to the Min of Health to request a review of what items have been deemed “essential” at dollar stores.

Dollar stores are essential for many – and these restrictions are not equitable.

I’d like to thank the team from #one2give for leading this initiative! #onpoli pic.twitter.com/nSCASDfHMm
— Dr. Jill Andrew (@JILLSLASTWORD) April 27, 2021

City committee kills Josh Matlow’s proposal to allow drinking in parks

4:10 pm The city’s Economic and Community Development Committee has nixed a motion by Councillor Josh Matlow to launch a pilot program that would allow beer and wine drinking in public parks this summer.

“The committee referred the motion off to staff with zero timeline for it coming back,” Matlow tweeted on Tuesday. “During this pandemic summer, the very time when we don’t want people congregating indoors, placing unreasonable restrictions on the use of our parks is inequitable & wrong.”

The motion asked the city to consider allowing residents to drink lower alcohol-content beverages – like beer, wine and cider – in public parks and beaches between 11 am and 9 pm between May 21 and 31.

“We have many concerns around things that promote interactions between people, interactions between people and others with whom they don’t live, while we are continuing to find ourselves in the midst of the most significant public health emergency of our time,” Toronto Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa said.

Toronto Board of Health Chair Joe Cressy added that Matlow’s motion was created “without any consultation with staff.”

“This was rushed,” he said, adding the outdoor drinking rules should be reconsidered and revised but should be done so “thoughtfully with the advice and diligence of our staff… this has not been done in a collaborative, consultative or thoughtful manner.”

Luminato Festival reschedules to October

2:25 pm Arts festival Luminato is rescheduling from June to October, organizers announced today.

“The latest restrictions are a new challenge that require us to move the festival forward to the fall season to ensure that we can safely deliver a powerful program which shares the artists’ collective vision and offers hope and inspiration,” Luminato CEO Celia Smith said in a statement.

“After a year of lockdowns that have shuttered live performance, there is a growing hunger among audiences for cultural events as vaccinations continue to roll out,” she added. “Arts, culture and creativity will help us find our way through this difficult time and draw us together again.”

The move marks the first time in the event’s 15-year history that it will not happen in summer. The multi-disciplinary festival typically takes place over two weeks in June, offering a mix of stage, film, visual art and music programming by local and international artists. Organizers will begin unveiling this year’s slate in June.

The festival is also working with city officials and a health and safety specialist to ensure “artists and technicians are safe throughout the creation and production process” in the lead-up to the fall event.

Toronto has cancelled all city-permitted events through early summer. The province is in the midst of a stay-at-home order and federal public health officials have projected restrictions could begin lifting in some areas of the country in July or August if 75 per cent of the population is vaccinated by then.

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Ontario reports 3,265 new COVID-19 cases, 29 deaths

10:45 am Ontario reported 3,265 new cases of COVID-19 and 29 more deaths on April 27.

The province’s daily case count has declined over the past three days, with 3,150 cases confirmed on Monday, 3,947 on Sunday and 4,094 on Saturday. The seven-day average for new infections is now 3,888, down from 4,319 a week ago.

Intensive care unit admissions dropped by two to 875, and of those patients 589 people are breathing with the help of a ventilator. Overall COVID-19 hospitalizations rose by 65 to 2,336 in the past day.

“Locally, there are 1,044 new cases in Toronto, 673 in Peel, 452 in York Region, 171 in Durham and 150 in Ottawa,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said on Twitter.

Four of today’s deaths were people between the ages of 40 and 59 and three were long-term care home residents.

Daily testing continues to be well below provincial capacity. Labs conducted 34,000 tests in the past day, making for a percent positivity rate of 10.2 per cent – up from 10 per cent this time last week.

During a press briefing at Queen’s Park on Monday, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health said there are indications the epidemic curve is flattening in some parts of the province, but not all – particularly hot spots.

Earlier in the day, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa cautioned that it is too early to say the city’s public health indicators are trending in the right direction.

“I’m reluctant to characterize case counts as plateauing,” she said during a city hall press briefing. “A thousand cases a day is never going to be anything to feel good about and certainly not something that we can accept. If we are to bring the third wave under control or have a real hope of the kind of summer we all crave, there is a lot of work to be done.”

As of 8 pm, Ontario had administered 4,791,030 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. To date, 1,086,468 vaccine doses have been administered in Toronto.

Ontario expands vaccine eligibility to 45+ in hot spots

10:10 am People age 45+ who live in hot spots are now able to book appointments at city-run mass immunization sites. Child-care workers in licensed child-care settings across the province will also be eligible to book vaccination appointments later this week.

The eligibility expansion for people 45+ took effect at 8 am this morning.

There are 114 hot spots across the province, identified by postal code. People in those areas who qualify can now book via the provincial booking system or by calling public health units that are handling bookings directly. In Toronto, people must use the provincial system to book at a city-run site.

People 18+ in hot spots can also be vaccinated via mobile and pop-up sites. However, locations and times for those clinics are communicated locally to high-risk residents by community leaders.

Licensed child-care workers will be eligible on April 29.

“Eligible workers in licensed child-care settings will receive a letter from their employer. This letter must be available at the point of booking and taken to the vaccination appointment,” the government said. “In the coming weeks, eligibility will be expanded to child-care workers in unlicensed child-care settings across the province.”

Ontario has administered nearly 4.8 million vaccine doses to date and 36.6 per cent of the province’s population age 18+ has received at least one dose.

Toronto orders four workplaces to close over COVID-19 outbreaks

9:55 am A McDonald’s restaurant at Bathurst and Steeles, a Nissan dealership in High Park and beauty company Deciem in Etobicoke are among the businesses ordered to fully or partially close due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

On Tuesday night, Toronto Public Health (TPH) released the list of four workplaces ordered to fully close and seven to partially close under a section 22 order that allows the city to shut businesses with five or more positive COVID-19 cases within a 14-day period.

Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Eileen de Villa issued the order to curb virus spread during the third wave. It took effect on April 23.

“Further instructions on employee isolation, quarantine and testing of employees have been communicated directly with the workplace,” the city said in a statement. “The majority of the workplaces where this Order would apply will not often or usually be places where the general public goes. As in the past, TPH will continue to communicate publicly if there is risk of exposure to the general public.”

The full list of businesses ordered close is here. The city will announce any new closures via its website by Thursday at 3 pm each week.