No tighter lockdown for Toronto until after the holidays, say officials, begging residents to resist the temptation of holiday gatherings

Thestar.com
Dec. 24
David Rider

tighter COVID-19 lockdown is possible for Toronto in the new year, but for now city officials want residents to focus on resisting the temptation to mingle while they holiday jingle.

Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s medical officer of health, told reporters Wednesday that Toronto Public Health (TPH) staff are scrutinizing regulations from Premier Doug Ford’s government that will see all of Ontario join Toronto and Peel in a new lockdown starting Boxing Day.

TPH staff are “assessing for opportunities for enhancements or areas where we might bolster,” provincial restrictions that continue the local ban on indoor dining and gym use, while tweaking rules on retail including hardware and pet food sales.

“We’re continuing to assess what options might be available to us as life returns to a more regular pace after the holidays,” de Villa said, in particular “options that will allow us to better serve and address the needs of the hardest hit individuals, communities and neighbourhoods in the city as far as COVID-19 is concerned.”

De Villa and Toronto Mayor John Tory repeated, in their final scheduled briefing before Christmas, pleas for Torontonians to stay home as much as possible to limit the risk of virus spread and crashing the health-care system.

Hunkering down only with fellow household members and celebrating with others online or by phone is vital to Canada’s biggest city reducing pandemic hospitalizations and deaths before vaccines are widely administered, they said.

“This Christmas has to be different,” Tory said, adding that distancing, wearing masks, washing hands and other precautions are “almost more effective than all the government rules that we can all bring forward ...

“People have a lot in their hands, between now and New Year’s Day and beyond, to affect these (COVID-19) numbers in a positive way and (reduce) the strain on the health-care system.”

Asked to respond to a Star story suggesting Ford waiting until Dec. 26 to impose lockdown could result in 10,000 potentially avoided COVID-19 cases across Ontario, Tory noted Toronto is already in lockdown and returned to the need for people to voluntarily hunker at home.

Toronto recorded 628 new COVID-19 infections Wednesday, 17 deaths and another 85 people in intensive care. Toronto’s seven-day average for daily new infections is 596.

De Villa called Health Canada approval of Moderna’s vaccine, which like Pfizer’s drug requires two doses but does not require deep-freeze storage, “a bit of a Christmas gift or holiday present for all of us.”

Toronto front-line health workers and long-term-care workers are already receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Tory suggested the rollout to regular Torontonians could start in about two months.

But he begged Torontonians to not in any way reduce vigilance against the virus because mass immunization is on the horizon.

“Two months is a long time with the kind of case counts we’ve seen, the kind of spread we’ve seen,” he said, “and the vaccine won’t be helping us in a material way with the vast majority of people in that time.”

The mayor also urged Torontonians to join an international “Christmas Eve jingle” movement where people ring bells or bang pots or make other noises outside at 6 p.m. Thursday to say thanks to all front-line workers for their pandemic efforts.

And he announced an extra $3.12 million in funding to 33 community-based agencies providing services to Torontonians hardest hit by the pandemic.

The money, from the province of Ontario and Scheinberg Relief Fund, will go to agencies helping groups including Indigenous and Black Torontonians and people in neighbourhoods in the city’s northeast and northwest corners.

De Villa was asked when we’re “going to get out from under all this.”

She hesitated to make a prediction because the virus has proven so unpredictable but said: “I do hope that we will be looking at a happier holiday season next year -- I think I can at least say that.”