{"id":26283,"date":"2020-04-03T17:02:48","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T21:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26283"},"modified":"2020-04-09T18:38:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T22:38:45","slug":"region-asks-seniors-to-stay-home-as-town-closes-public-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/region-asks-seniors-to-stay-home-as-town-closes-public-spaces\/","title":{"rendered":"Region asks seniors to stay home as Town closes public spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

People 70 and over\nare being told to stay home as the fight against COVID-19 continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the message\ndelivered by both Premier Doug Ford and Dr. Karim Kurji, York Region\u2019s Chief\nMedical Officer of Health, at the start of the week, as\npositive cases in York Region sailed past 200 over the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of April 3, twelve of York Region’s cases were located in Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six of the Aurora cases are travel-related, one is a case of close contact, one is confirmed as a local transmission, one is related to an institutional outbreak, and three remain under investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have had 237\ncases so far, with twelve in healthcare workers,\u201d Dr. Kurji told media in a\nvirtual press conference on Monday afternoon. \u201cWe have had two long-term care\nhomes and we have one group home for the developmentally challenged that have\nbeen affected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of the long-term\ncare homes impacted are located in Markham, with the group home situated in\nRichmond Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Kurji noted that\nthe York Region Health Unit is looking at two clusters in Vaughan \u2013 Body Barre\nand the gym at the Al Palladini Community Centre. He encourages anyone who was\nat Body Barre between March 9 and March 15, and the Al Palladini Community\nCentre between March 7 and March 15 to contact York Region Public Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe keep on being\nvigilant with respect to intelligence on any other clusters that may have\ndeveloped,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presently, new\ntravel-related cases are \u201cprobably declining\u201d, said Dr. Kurji on the most\ncurrent data, but \u201cthis isn\u2019t totally evident.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we look at the\nlocal transmission cases through there is a mixed picture here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\nwant to especially emphasize to the community to continue with the physical\ndistancing, which is very important because together we will get over this. The\nadvice here would be anyone over the age of 70, please stay home. Only go out\nif it is essential. Try and do your shopping over the internet or over the\nphone, and try to get friends, family and neighbours to assist you, but make\nsure you keep two metres away from anyone who comes to your home. We are asking\nthat we be a little careful and mindful of keeping our physical distances from\nour [grandparents] as well and for the general public, we\u2019re asking that you\nstay home as much as you possibly can and only go out for essential things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEssential things\nmean health service or health care needs, going to the pharmacist, picking up\nshopping, but otherwise stay home. If you do go out for a walk, be very sure\nthat you\u2019re keeping two metres away from everybody else. In addition, at this\ntime of the year, folks have colds, sometimes flu, and sometimes you don\u2019t know\nif you have COVID-19 or not. We are asking those with mild symptoms to\nself-isolate at home, make sure that close contacts, which are usually\nhousehold contacts, also self-isolate for 14 days, and then work through the\npeople you might have had close contact with two days prior to the onset of\nyour symptoms and get them to self-isolate as well. If medical conditions\ndeteriorate, seek medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Region of York is\ntaking a three-pronged approach to tackling the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is case and\ncontact follow-up and case identification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the bread\nand butter piece for public health and it is a time-tested strategy, what we\ncall the containment strategy,\u201d said Dr. Kurji. \u201cThe second strategy is one of\ntesting: the more people that we test, the more we are able to shift scarce\nresources onto those that need our attention in terms of putting rings around\nthem and avoiding community exposures. The third strategy is the whole of\nsociety approach, which is the physical distancing, the closure of certain\nbusinesses, etc., and hopefully we don\u2019t come down to this one, but lockdowns.\nWe need the public\u2019s assistance in continuing to break these chains of\ntransmission. There is no reason why we cannot fight this virus and why we\ncannot win. The data seems to give us the impression that we are getting there,\nso please continue with these measures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AURORA CLOSES PUBLIC SPACES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, the Town\nof Aurora announced the closure of all public open spaces in an effort to help\nflatten the curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closure was\neffective immediately and pertains to parks, tennis courts, skateboard parks,\nsports fields, baseball diamonds, basketball courts, playgrounds and the\nleash-free dog park on Industrial Parkway North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to strongly\nencourage residents to adhere to the closure of public open spaces in Aurora,\u201d\nsaid Mayor Tom Mrakas in a statement. \u201cWe need to flatten the COVID-19 curve,\nand we can only do this with a global commitment from everyone to practice\nsocial distancing and refrain from social gatherings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trails in Aurora are\nstill open to the public although the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority\nhas closed Sheppard\u2019s Bush Conservation Area. If you decide to use the public\ntrails system in Aurora, you are strongly encouraged to practice social\ndistancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Town encourages\nresidents to \u201creport violations of the public open spaces closure instead of\napproaching the groups themselves\u201d by sending an email with the day, time and\nlocation to bdepartment@aurora.ca, or leaving a voicemail at\n905-727-3123 x4240.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All complaints will be investigated and fines of\nup to $5,000 may be levied.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People 70 and over are being told to stay home as the fight against COVID-19 continues. This was the message delivered by both Premier Doug Ford and Dr. Karim Kurji, York Region\u2019s Chief Medical Officer of Health, at the start of the week, as positive cases in York Region sailed past 200 over the weekend. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6PV","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-03 06:36:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}