The City of Peterborough is closing its facilities and daycare services for three weeks as a precautionary measure against COVID-19.
On Friday afternoon, the city stated operations of programs and facilities would not run for three weeks (until April 6) along with postponements of non-essential public meetings.
“The health and safety of residents is the top priority,” Mayor Diane Therrien said. “While we haven’t had a local case of COVID-19 yet, this action is necessary as a preventative measure to protect the health and safety of our community. I know it is an inconvenience but it’s the smart thing to do.”
The facilities closing include:
- Peterborough Memorial Centre (cancelling the Indian River Reptile Zoo’s Dinosaurs Live exhibit Saturday, the Peterborough Tackle, Swap and Fishing Show on Sunday and an Alice Cooper concert April 1)
- Peterborough Sport and Wellness Centre
- Peterborough Museum and Archives
- Peterborough Public Library
- Art Gallery of Peterborough
- All other arenas
All events and programs in these facilities, including March break camps, will be affected by this closure, the city stated.
With the closure of all Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board schools, the city-operated child care services at those facilities will also be closed for the three-week period.
The closure affects the before-and-after-school programs at Edmison Heights Public School and Westmount Public School as well as the full-day program at Pearson/PCVS.
Peterborough Day Care Centre remains open based on the advice of health officials, the city stated.
Peterborough Public Health says there have been no presumptive or positive cases in its jurisdiction, which includes the city, Peterborough County, Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation.
However, the health unit late Friday did activate its emergency response team, reducing or suspending some clinics and training classes, to reassign staff to activities related to COVID-19.
“While there is still no local positive case, we are now in full emergency response mode in order to focus on the surge of activity related to COVID-19, such as increased surveillance, screening, testing, and infection control and prevention communications with community partners and individual residents,” explained Dr. Rosana Salvaterra, Medical Officer of Health. “This means that essential public health services will remain intact, while others will be reduced or suspended so we can reassign staff to the emergency response.”
The city has implemented enhanced cleaning for services that are continuing with normal operations, such as Peterborough Transit, and city facilities that are remaining open.
For residents visiting municipal facilities that will remain open during this period, there will be social-distancing measures implemented, based on the specifics of each facility, to try to reduce the spread of illness. People are encouraged to follow the recommendations of Peterborough Public Health on interacting with other people and practising safe handwashing and hygiene.
The city is restricting non-essential, work-related travel of city employees and taking other internal measures with its workforce as part of its COVID-19 response actions.
“The city is continuing to communicate with public health officials to monitor and assess the evolving situation related to COVID-19,” the city stated. “Actions related COVID-19 may change as the situation evolves.”
Comments