The entire city of Timmins is now under a state of emergency. For now, at least, it won’t affect the life you’ve become accustomed to over the last several weeks.
Mayor George Pirie instituted it today, noting that he said earlier that he would declare it when our health care services became overwhelmed by COVID-19.
“That is not the case today.”
The mayor quickly adds that another benefit of the declaration is the authority to give volunteers protection under the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board – the WSIB.
“We have a remarkable group of volunteers that will be stepping into the role of the Lord’s Kitchen and serving three meals a day,” the mayor remarks. “We want to ensure that they have ultimately the highest level of protection that we have available to us.”
(Bob McIntyre, MyTimminsNow.com staff)
The state of emergency also reinforces physical distancing, and enables the city to act more quickly as developments arise.
And the mayor says a nightly curfew might also be instated.
“There’s a lot of moving parts around that. We don’t have all the answers but yes, we’ll protect our population and curfew is one of the areas that we’re talking about.”
Pirie says police and bylaw officers are already enforcing the rules against gatherings of more than five people.
Here is his Health Table briefing for today (Fri., Apr. 3). He discusses the declaration at about the 5:50 mark. He has also crunched some numbers, and has a worst case scenario on the number of cases of COVID-19 we could experience in Timmins. It’s at approx. 7:40.