Premier Doug Ford said there "shouldn’t be any confusion" over gathering guidelines for Thanksgiving celebrations this weekend.
Only, there was.
Recent Twitter posts have captured the confusion Ontarians have been feeling over how many people they should expect to share the turkey with this year, or whether they'll be left with plenty of leftovers.
— Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos (@DrVivianS) October 6, 2020
Mixed provincial messaging and guidelines garnered more attention Tuesday when a CTV reporter asked the premier about what Ontarians should be doing during the pandemic.
"What we’re asking is try to stay within the family, if you’re going over and I understand there’s a lot of single people out there, if they have a family they’re close to, please wear a mask, keep social distance," said Ford, who then pivoted to the province's limit of 10 people for indoor gatherings and suggested this was the rule he would follow.
"I would really really discourage people from having 25 people even if it’s outdoors, stick within 10 people," he said, adding that Thanksgiving is "going to make or break it" in the context of high COVID-19 case counts in recent days.
"I have a big family, and I told Karla, I said, and she knows, we have no more than 10, and simple as that, and that’s what we’re going to obey by as well," he continued. "And when it comes to having everyone over, your aunts and uncles, hang off on the hugging and the kissing."
This was a different message from the one Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario's associate chief medical officer of health, shared yesterday. She said that for Thanksgiving people should limit celebrations to those they live with — the exception was those living alone, who could join another household.
Asked to clarify the mixed messaging, Ford responded: "If you play it back I said stick within your household."
VIDEO: Confused about mixed messaging around Thanksgiving and who can visit?
Here's @CityCynthia question of Premier Ford and his response:#ONpoli pic.twitter.com/8NiK2QuAGc
— James Wattie (@jameswattie) October 6, 2020
1:18pm: Have 10 people over
1:25pm: Stick to your householdTwo different Thanksgiving messages, 7 minutes apart from @fordnation.
This is why people are confused. #onpoli pic.twitter.com/rXiYVZnlAP
— Green Party of Ontario (@OntarioGreens) October 6, 2020
A third reporter then asked Ford for further clarification: who was he going to spend Thanksgiving with this year?
"I’ll find out the arrangements, all I know it’s not going to be more than 10, it’ll be within our household," said Ford.
The premier cleared up his plans soon after with a post on Twitter.
This year, Ontarians should celebrate #Thanksgiving with members of their household only. I just spoke with my wife Karla and we’ll follow the same advice as we stick to our immediate household for Thanksgiving dinner.
I know it’s tough, we need to stop the spread of COVID-19.
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 6, 2020
Testing
Responding to a question about Ontarians' concerns that provincial measures aren't working given the high numbers of COVID-19 cases, Premier Ford disagreed.
"I’m hearing the total opposite, we’re flattening the curve, we’re putting the protocols in," he said.
Ontario has 548 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19. Daily case counts have been above 500 for the past nine days, with two days of record highs of 700 and 732 cases.
The premier touted Ontario's testing network, which has struggled to keep up with the demand in testing, and the fact that the province has completed more than four million tests throughout the pandemic.
"By working around the clock, we’ve also been able to reduce the testing backlog by 40 per cent since last week," he said.
On Friday, the province’s backlog of tests awaiting processing reached over 90,000 for the first time and the premier vowed to bring it down. To that end, Ford announced that as of Sunday, assessment centres would discontinue walk-in testing services and a new appointment-based system would begin on Tuesday.
Since then, the backlog has been reduced to a little over 55,483 tests. However, the province’s data show the number of tests processed per day has not increased since then — but the number of people tested per day dropped significantly during the switch to appointment-only testing. The number of people tested from Saturday to Monday this week dropped by over 33,000 compared to the week prior.
There is no data yet available to show if the number of people tested per day will rebound under the new model.
Several assessment centres offering online booking have no test times available today or tomorrow, meaning some people, even if they're symptomatic, might not be able to get a test in the next few days.
To address this, the premier said, "We’re just asking people if you don’t have symptoms, please don’t go there."
Ontario Health President and CEO Matthew Anderson said one of the aims in moving to an appointment-based testing system was to ensure "we are providing enough testing capacity in the right places."
He said the challenge with an assessment centre increasing testing on a particular day without the provincial lab network knowing about it is that hundreds or thousands of additional tests could go to a lab and then have to be shifted to a different location.
"In that kind of model from a turnaround time perspective, we could lose a day or even two days trying to move those tests around," he said.
Restaurants and bars
While Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto's medical officer of health, and other health stakeholders have asked the province to temporarily halt indoor dining and other activities in Toronto, the province and the premier have resisted.
Asked about launching a "secret shopper" system to crack down on restaurants and bars that aren't adhering to public health guidelines, Premier Ford said he likes the idea, but that most of these businesses are following protocols.
Ford said he's talked to the labour minister about cracking down on the "bad actors" and repeated his message that he isn't willing to shut down these businesses without what he referred to as "hardcore evidence."
De Villa said in a recent letter to her provincial counterpart that 18 of the 45 outbreaks between Sept. 20-26 were in restaurants, bars and entertainment venues.
"You can’t put people out of work, tens of thousands of people, destroy their lives, just bang that quickly, just bang they’re done, I can’t do that," said Ford.
Anti-maskers charged
A man who heads a Facebook group called "Mothers Against Distancing" and has attended anti-masking protests during the COVID-19 pandemic has been charged under Canada's Quarantine Act.
Toronto Police Service charged Christopher Saccoccia, 37, also known as Chris Sky, and Jennifer Saccoccia, for allegedly breaking quarantine rules, according to a press release.
The police service said two individuals, who were supposed to quarantine for two weeks after returning to Canada from abroad, were allegedly spotted on Oct. 3 at Yonge-Dundas Square "for a rally that was attended by 500 non-mask wearing participants." The man was also spotted on Sept. 26 at the same location.
Patient rights and essential caregivers
Liberal MPP John Fraser introduced a private member's bill in the house Tuesday that he said aims to "protect and to enshrine in legislation the rights of patients when receiving care across the entire health-care system." The bill, dubbed the Connecting Care Amendment Act (Patient Bill of Rights), would also include a definition of an essential caregiver and outline a patient’s right to designate an essential caregiver in any setting.
Fraser said that as per Bill 175, the Connecting People to Home and Community Care Act, the government's plan to move a bill of rights from home care legislation to a regulation was the "wrong approach."
"Rights of individuals should always be preserved in legislation," said Fraser, adding that regulations can be changed easily. "Those rights are really critical to people when they’re in care and so I think we have to give it permanency, we have to give it some teeth."
"The need for a legislated bill of rights is something we should all be able to agree on, doesn’t matter what side of the legislature you sit on," he continued.
The bill outlines a patient's right to transparency, information, freedom from stigma and harassment and to appeal if they feel their rights have been infringed upon, said Fraser.
As for essential caregivers, Fraser said COVID-19 has shown the critical role they play in the health-care system and to those they're caring for.
"Whether it’s feeding, bathing, companionship, transport, or just simply being present, essential caregivers are just that, essential to the people they care for," he said. "They are often an extra set of eyes and ears."
Fraser's bill describes an essential caregiver as someone designated by another person as such and who "continuously or occasionally provides personal, financial, social, psychological, emotional or physical support or assistance or any other personal care or health services to the other individual."
"During this pandemic, we’ve seen the results when essential caregivers are denied access, not just in Ontario’s long-term care homes, also in hospitals and other settings, lots of unnecessary suffering," said Fraser.
Long-term care
New visitor restrictions for long-term care homes in Ottawa, Toronto and Peel Region are being introduced this week. The three regions have made up most of the new COVID-19 cases reported in Ontario in recent days.
Starting Wednesday, "general visitors" will not be allowed into homes in these areas. Essential visitors, which includes one caregiver per resident, will be permitted, but if the home is in outbreak, visitor rules will be up to the local public health unit, the provincial government stated in a press release.
"The second wave of COVID-19 is hitting some parts of Ontario harder than others," Minister of Long-Term Care Merrilee Fullerton said in a statement. "We're making changes to keep people living and working in long-term care homes safe, wherever they are in the province."
The government has created a list of homes that are facing tighter restrictions and said it will update it according to COVID-19 transmission in communities.
The province said caregivers could be family, friends or individuals hired to help a resident with feeding, hygiene, mobility, companionship, translation or cognitive stimulation. While a resident can have up to two caregivers, only one can enter the home at a time in these three regions.
Changes to retirement home visitor policies are expected to follow.
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