Tory urges residents to celebrate religious festivities at home or online due to COVID-19

Thestar.com
April 7, 2020
David Rider

Declaring that “an Easter Egg Hunt is not worth your life,” Mayor John Tory urged Torontonians to huddle only with immediate family at upcoming religious celebrations.

Tory told people Monday to stay away from extended family and any long-weekend gatherings as Toronto’s #COVID-19 death toll rose by seven in one day, to 32, with almost half of them residents of local seniors’ homes.

The number of confirmed and probable cases of the deadly virus jumped 69 to 1,301 in Toronto’s official tally. Some 145 people were in hospital, 60 of them in intensive care.

Tory and Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, continued urging residents to stay at home as much as possible to slow the spread of COVID-19, thought to occur primarily via droplets from mouths and noses of infected people.

In a news release, the city said people about to celebrate Easter, Passover and the start of Ramadan should stay home and “connect with loved ones, friends, and vulnerable members of the community online or by phone.”

Toronto has imposed increasingly strict rules to prevent people gathering, including closure of playground amenities and an unprecedented rule to stay more than two metres from nonhousehold members in parks and public squares.

Last weekend Tory suggested he’ll likely close all of High Park when photogenic cherry blossoms bloom, to prevent the annual gathering of huge crowds over about a week starting in late April or early May.

“I’m in favour of just shutting the park down for a period of time because if you try to manage it somehow you’re just going to get a crowd scene,” Tory told CP24.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing we’re just going to have to miss this year, I think, but stay tuned,” he said of the blossom viewing, adding city officials hope to make an announcement on it one way or another this week.

Enforcement officers, who were busy last weekend educating people about social distancing and handing out tickets at hot spots including High Park and Bluffer’s Park in Scarborough, could have their hands full if the park remains open.

Tory suggested Torontonians who normally crowd the hills and picnic under the blizzard of blooms might have to make do with a video livestream instead.

City officials urged that people who need to shop for groceries for the coming long weekend avoid Thursday and Saturday, if possible, to prevent long lineups outside stores, which are limiting the number of shoppers to minimize chances of infection.

Many Torontonians who can’t afford holiday feasts usually rely on food banks that have shuttered as local pandemic hospitalizations and deaths rose. Toronto on Monday announced a multi-pronged effort to ensure low-income and otherwise vulnerable Toronto families don’t lose access to nutritious food.

Efforts include helping the Red Cross deliver food hampers to seniors unable to leave home to get groceries --with information available by calling 1-833-204-9952 --and food banks now starting to operate out of closed Toronto library branches.

The city is also working with partners to get grocery gift cards to families of children who would normally be getting free snacks or meals via the school nutrition program.

Residents who need information on the food programs can call 211, go to the website https://www.211toronto.ca/ or look at a city online map of food resources.