News of the latest restrictions to roll out across Ontario later this week were met with frustration and anger on Monday.
There were also calls for support for the various services ordered to close or scale back, as well as protection for health-care workers.
“Why are we not doing something different? Piecemeal decisions that impact employees, workers, schoolchildren, families — it’s unacceptable, two years in, to have that kind of stuff continue to happen," Barrie Chamber of Commerce executive director Paul Markle told BarrieToday.
Measures to both keep the community safe and allow businesses to operate would have helped to prevent the reintroduction of closures and restrictions, he said.
Schools will move to remote learning starting Wednesday and continue until at least Jan. 17.
Also, as of Wednesday a series of new restrictions will be implemented for 21 days until Jan. 26.
They include:
— Social gatherings are limited to five people indoors and 10 people outdoors;
— Remote work unless employees are required to be on-site;
— 50 per cent capacity limits at retail locations, personal care services, libraries and at indoor weddings, funerals and religious services, rites and ceremonies;
— Saunas, steam rooms, and oxygen bars as well as indoor meeting and event spaces are to close;
— Indoor dining at restaurants, bars and other food or drink establishments as well as indoor concert venues, theatres, cinemas, rehearsals, recorded performances, museums and attractions are to close;
— Indoor sport and recreational fitness facilities including gyms are to close, except for athletes training for the Olympics and Paralympics and select professional and elite amateur sport leagues.
Many parents who were prepared to send their children to school on Wednesday following the holiday break have expressed concern on social media about having to suddenly accommodate students for at-home learning for at least two weeks.
The association representing Simcoe County high school teachers, meanwhile, is happy to see additional safety measures. Jen Hare says precautions should have been taken earlier.
Hare, the teachers’ bargaining unit president of the Ontario Secondary School Federation in Simcoe County, pointed out that the installation of HEPA filters in classrooms and access to N-95 masks and rapid tests could have helped make classrooms safer and helped to contain the spread of COVID-19 and the rapid spread of omicron, which is the latest variant.
“We knew schools were going to become a strain on the health-care system” and contributing to the overall community spread of COVID-19, she said. “If those things (filters, masks and tests) are not in place, the schools should not have been opened.
“The frustrating part is nothing significantly, in terms of numbers or hospitalizations, has changed since Thursday (when it was announced that schools will open this Wednesday)," she added.
"Families, education workers (and) students have been waiting for this news for far too long.”
Hare says not enough protections were put into place, even though it had been clear omicron was going to create havoc in the health-care and education systems and communities overall, she said. She fears that the latest announcement gives families and educators no time to pivot and plan for the at-home learning scenario.
On the business side, Markle says this last round of restrictions is bound to be the tipping point for some organizations.
Like Hare, he would like to see more long-term solutions.
Markle is looking for some sort of strategic plan that ties in evidence-based metrics allowing members of the community to plan ahead.
“We’ve consistently asked for safe operating protocols for restaurants, bars, those kinds of establishments, gyms, but they’re always the first ones to shut down and they take the greatest impact,” he said. “This closure, this far down the line, is just going to wipe out a bunch of them.”
But it’s not just the financial concerns. The closure order of restaurants is taking an emotional toll as well, said Dana Parris, owner of The Lockeroom Sports Bar and Grill.
She said she was putting away yesterday’s contact-tracing forms and daily COVID safety forms when the announcement was made Monday.
“I don’t know how much more we could do,” Parris said. “We’re doing everything in our power to keep our customers safe and to follow every government guideline and here we go again.
“I don’t know how not to be angry at this," she added.
Staffing and ensuring stability for staff members is a major concern, Parris said.
The restaurant industry lost staff members across the country to other industries following earlier closures. Parris said retraining new staff for The Lockeroom’s reopening in July was exhausting and she shudders at the prospect of once again losing staff.
“We’ll still be running takeout, hoping for the best with that, just to keep the operation flowing,” she said. “We just hope we can hold on as long as we can and hopefully it’s not much longer than three weeks.”
