Community News Update - November 13, 2020

Dear Community,

Tomorrow we will see new restrictions come into effect in Toronto as a result of the continued surge in COVID-19 cases in Ontario. While we saw a decrease from yesterday today, with 1396 new cases reported today, our case numbers are continuing to trend upwards.

As we enter this weekend, it is vital that our community stays focused on reducing the spread of COVID-19. We must do our best to abide by the regulations that are being put in place in a combined effort between the province and Toronto Public Health. Right now, we are in a precious window to really clamp down on the spread of COVID-19 – and reverse the course that we’re on right now – which according to modelling data could lead us to more than 6500 cases a day in December.

Even Doug Ford seems to be getting the message, with an announcement today that he will be back peddling his previous decision to set the threshold for the harshest COVID-19 restrictions at a positivity rate four times higher than had been recommended by experts. Thankfully, after a significant backlash in the last 48 hours, he caved and will now revert to following the initial recommendation of public health professionals and set the bar at an infection rate of 2.5% (and an infection rate of 25 per 100,000) for the ‘red’ level.

Toronto will be entering this tier of restrictions this Saturday (Nov 14), and that comes along with some important changes for our community.

Key things to remember:

 

  1. Restrict all close contacts to your household.
  2. Limit all social gatherings to household members only and/or 1 or 2 essential supports
  3. Promote working from home as much as possible
  4. No indoor dining
  5. Indoor group fitness classes closed

These are just a few of the key things to remember, for the full list of guidelines from Toronto Public Health please click here.
This evening I hosted a Tenants Town Hall on Facebook Live, with some incredible tenant experts from our community. I want to take a moment to thank MPP Suze Morrison, Prophetess Elijah-Marie Reid, and John Plumadore for joining me on our panel for this incredibly important discussion. I would also like to send a very special thanks to MPP Andrea Horwath for sending her greetings to the event – and everyone who tuned in!

If you did not get a chance to catch the stream live, you can watch a replay of the whole event here.
Finally, I would just like to repeat one more time just how important it is that we’re all wearing our masks, washing our hands, and following the public health guidelines right now. We’re going to have a few challenging days ahead of us – but we’re going to make it.

In Solidarity,


Jill Andrew

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