Toronto announced yesterday that it would maintain a ban on indoor bars and restaurants, casinos, meeting centres, and other facilities for at least another four weeks.
And it's not alone. Across the country, more places are locking down tighter:
- Manitoba has banned social gatherings of any sort across the province and forced most retailers to close.
- Parts of B.C, including Vancouver, are implementing similar (though less tight) restrictions.
- Alberta is considering a two-week lockdown.
By the numbers:
- Canada is now reporting 268,735 cases of COVID.
- 10,564 Canadians have died.
- New cases have been above 4,000 for the past few days, more than twice what was regularly reported during the spring peaks (though much more testing is being done now).
The dilemma: Cities and provinces now have to decide whether to lockdown, and how best to do so, in order to slow the growth of cases. Public health is a top priority, but many businesses — and jobs — are unlikely to survive another strict lockdown after months of struggling to get by.
At the same time, massive outbreaks will limit economic activity whether there is an official lockdown or not.
Big picture: These decisions are only getting harder as the economic and health tolls rise. For now it looks like the only real way out is a vaccine which will hopefully arrive sooner rather than late.
