The phased reopening of Manitoba’s economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, announced Wednesday by Premier Brian Pallister, means a number of businesses previously labeled as ‘non-essential’ can open their doors as of Monday.
This first phase includes therapeutic and medical services, as well as non-urgent surgery and diagnostic procedures.
“Critical public health measures and travel restrictions remain. Priority elective surgeries have been restarted, diagnostics screening will resume and some non-essential businesses will reopen but must limit occupancy to 50 per cent of normal business levels or one person per 10 square metres, whichever is lower,” the province said in a statement.
Some medical practitioners, however, have remained open throughout the pandemic.
Dr. Steven Gall, president of the Manitoba Chiropractors Association, told 680 CJOB that the majority of his members have stayed open, treating essential service workers as well as urgent and emergent cases.
“From the outset, with the health orders, we’ve really diligently adhered to those,” said Gall.
“The orders that came from Manitoba Health and Shared Health gave us directions of what we could or couldn’t do, and how to set up our practices.
“The idea (of staying open) would’ve been that we would’ve tried to lighten the load on our hospitals, ERs, urgent care centres, so we could flatten the curve.”
It’s been a stressful time for chiropractors — who have had to screen anyone calling for appointments or visiting offices, as well as upping social distancing procedures and sanitization plans — and especially for Gall himself, who took on the role of president at the end of March.
“I walked in as president in the early days of this state of emergency, but thankfully I walked in with almost 30 years of practice and board experience,” he said.
“There’s no playbook for this. This has been a situation where nothing could have been expected.”
Although chiropractors have remained busy — despite lower numbers of patients than usual — Gall said he expects things to start picking back up as people start returning to work.
“I think there’s a good chance that people who have stayed away will want to come back.”
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