City officials are in back-to-back meetings to determine the next steps in New Westminster's response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Fire chief Tim Armstrong told the Record Monday morning that more information about the city’s plans will be available later this afternoon. He said the emergency operations centre is now fully staffed, but remains at a Level 1 activation.
“We have a number of planning meetings going on today,” he said.
As of 10:15 a.m., the city has not closed any of its facilities. In response to the COVID-19 threat, the City of Surrey closed all of its recreation facilities on Sunday.
“Nothing as of yet,” Armstrong told the Record. “We are definitely in discussions about it. We are waiting for a couple of things from the province and the federal government.”
A notice on the City of New Westminster’s website states that municipal governments are guided by local, provincial and federal health authorities on health matters. The City of New Westminster is monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely and working with the Fraser Health Authority and other health agencies to ensure the most up-to-date information is available and recommended practices and protocols are followed.
Here’s a recap of what city officials told the Record mid-afternoon on Friday, March 17.
Blair Fryer, the city’s manager of communications, said it’s a “rapidly evolving” situation and the city is staying on top of things.
“Moving forward as this situation continues, we urge people to go directly to the provincial experts for that kind of information,” he said. “They are identified as the experts for a reason. We certainly take our direction from them.”
Dean Gibson, the city’s director of parks and recreation, said the city is heeding the recommendations from senior provincial health authorities with respect to gatherings of 250 persons or more.
“Effective immediately and through until the end of April, any city events that have attendance e of 250 or more or the potential to expand to 250 persons will be cancelled. Any events that are going to be hosted in city facilities that perhaps the event is run by others, they will be cancelled or suspended,” he told the Record early Friday afternoon. “We are currently evaluating our ability to operate some of our larger community facilities within that 250-person threshold. We expect to be able to speak more specifically about that by the end of the day today.”
Provincial health officials have stated that all gatherings of 250 people or more should be cancelled.
“We are looking at that right now. We will make some decisions with respect to our ability to maintain both public safety, as well as our employees safety, and what tools we can use to actually manage the number of people in the building at any time,” Gibson said. “Ultimately, if we feel comfortable that we can manage that appropriately, we want to minimize the impact on any facility operations as much as possible, but at the same token if we don’t feel we can safely manage that than we may be looking at a scenario that may be a reduced scale of operations or a potential facility closure.”
Visitors to many community facilities will start to notice “screening points” at the entrances, where information about COVID-19 was displayed.
“At this stage of the game, we are encouraging members of the public who come to facilities to at least follow a self assessment that will be identified on those posters – criteria that would suggest they not enter a facility,” Gibson said. “We are certainly asking for people’s cooperation in respecting that.”
The city intends to move forward in offering spring break registered programs, but may switch them up in response to provincial guidelines.
“We may be modifying the nature of the activities that happen in those programs, given the evolving situation, both locally and in the region as well. Some of those sessions might have involved travel to destinations like a Science World or a Play Dome in Vancouver, so we are obviously not going to be taking groups to locations that are crossing that 250-person limit,” Gibson said. “At this stage, those specific programs are on and we are responding to any requests that people may have for withdrawing from those programs, which would be their own choice, should they choose to do so. We will deal with those as they come along.”
According to Fryer, the City of New Westminster takes its lead from the provincial experts.
“The City of New Westminster does that in addition to all of our other municipal colleagues around Metro Vancouver. There are 21 of them. We are all communicating, we are all watching and we are all responding - following those provincial protocols. But it’s important that we do it this way so we don’t really have any community that is an outlier,” he said. “Our responses are not going to be that out of step with any other Metro Vancouver municipality as we go through the COVID-19 situation.”
The city has implemented its Pandemic Response Plan, which provides guidelines and actions to manage potential infection disease outbreaks. City maintenance staff has increased their cleaning protocols to ensure that high touch surfaces (door knobs, hand rails etc.) are being cleaned and disinfected frequently and the city will be providing hand sanitizer stations in its facilities.
In response to the COVID-19 situation, the City of New Westminster has opened its emergency operations centre to a Level 1 in an effort to support operations within the city.
“Level 1 is the first stage of the activation. It isn’t fully staffed, although we do have staff working in there. They are still trying to do some of their normal day to day work,” said Fire Chief Tim Armstrong. “The reason for the EOC activation is to keep more a less a thermometer on the corporation as a whole, on where we are, staffing levels, business continuity plans for the different departments , just being able to support all the departments if they are having critical issues that may arise from this.”
Fryer said there haven’t been any impacts on city operations at this time.
“We will be keeping an eye on things and responding accordingly,” he said.
Members of the city’s advisory committees will be notified that the City of New Westminster is cancelling all of those meetings until the end of April.
The city’s website recommends that people check with the BC Centre for Disease Control (www.bccdc.ca), the Fraser Health Authority (www.fraserhealth.ca) and Public Health Agency of Canada (www.canada.ca/en/public-health) for information and updates. It also encourages citizens to take the usual precautions to prevent regular cold or flu viruses during the cold and flu season, including:
- Washing hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
- Avoid touching eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
- Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
- Cover mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze or use the inside of your elbow.
- Stay home if you are sick.
- Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces daily.
