Hamilton asked to stay home and leave medical masks for health-care workers
Published April 6, 2020 at 8:58 pm
The City of Hamilton is asking residents to stay home as much as possible right now and in the days and weeks to come as the surge of COVID-19 cases is expected to hit.
The City of Hamilton is asking residents to stay home as much as possible right now and in the days and weeks to come as the surge of COVID-19 cases is expected to hit.
At Monday’s virtual media briefing, the director of Hamilton’s Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Paul Johnson, said that “the next few weeks will have an impact on our community.”
He said that municipal law enforcement is working with Hamilton Police Services (HPS) to enforce provincial orders as it relates to gatherings and trespassing on properties that have been closed to the public.
“Our golf courses are closed,” Johnson reminds residents once again. “Our golf courses are not public parks. They never have been. They are not places to take a walk.”
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Johnson seems to be referencing reports that a woman was heftily fined over the weekend when she was found walking her dog through one of the city’s golf courses.
Johnson also said that in an effort to facilitate working from home for residents or to support people who are self-isolating, they have relaxed enforcement of some parking violations, including two- to three-hour time limits on parking in residential areas as well as the city-wide 12-hour street parking time limit.
HPS Chief Eric Girt also weighed in at Monday’s media briefing for the first time since the pandemic came to Hamilton and he echoed Johnson’s tone in that “enforcement is the theme of the day.”
Girt said that while HPS may have changed a few things about how they engage with the public and they are working to ensure compliance with provincial orders, they are fully responding to and investigating other crimes in the city.
“As a police service, it’s our job to keep people safe,” he said. “We’re still out there.”
Also top of mind for those at the briefing was the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for first responders and health-care workers who are battling the virus head-on.
This comes after Premier Doug Ford announced that provincial PPE supplies are “strained” and that they’ve experienced some difficulties in procurement.
“The supply chain has been disrupted,” said Johnson.
“We’re not in a position to panic but there’s a heightened concern across the board,” he said referring to hospitals and public health workers.
Ford said they are working to beef up PPE supplies this week and Johnson’s timeline was similar.
“We’re very hopeful this week that [our efforts to secure supplies] will come to fruition this week,” he said.
Also, in an effort to conserve medical masks for hospitals and first responders, Hamilton’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, said that residents should consider the use of non-medical masks when out in public.
Sighting the recent recommendation from Canada’s top public health doctor, Dr. Theresa Tam, Richardson said that residents can find directions for making a mask on the Centre for Disease Control’s website.
“Don’t use medical masks because those need to be used by medical workers,” she said.
Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger ended the briefing by calling on local churches to ring their bells to pay tribute to first responders and health-care workers.
He said the City is asking that they ring their bells on Wednesdays and Sundays at 6 p.m. to show their support.
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