District Municipality of Muskoka CAO Julie Stevens gave councillors an update at their April 19 meeting about the COVID protocols being followed by the municipality.
She said testing requirements were relaxed for municipal employees (not the Pines Long-Term Care home) at the end of March, and other protocols followed such as relaxing physical distancing and mask-wearing requirements.
“We did start by relaxing the daily screenings—we went to passive instead of active, we removed the masking requirement,” she said, while also noting that those who wanted to wear a mask were welcomed to do so. Staff was also asked to carry a mask with them and wear one if they came across someone who was wearing a mask and wanted them to wear one as well.
“We were still encouraging physical distancing, but it wasn’t required and obviously we still had personal protective equipment available,” she said. “We did relax some of our rules around vehicles, especially as we move into the summer and we… need to transport our summer students and so we wanted to have some flexibility there.”
That lasted for about a week, said Stevens.
“Unfortunately, what happened is we saw a fairly significant increase in our… cases in a one-week period amongst that employee group and so we reverted back, we stepped back into our protocols,” she said, adding that masking is once more in effect “so if you’re walking, you’re wearing. We are doing active screening for the staff that are coming into workplaces, physical distancing is still in place, and we’ve reduced the number of staff that can be in vehicles at this time unless they have manager approval.”
She told council she wanted them to be aware that the municipality had reverted to instituting COVID protocols and said the issue would be re-examined once again at the end of this month.
Stevens said input is being gathered from councillors and senior staff regarding whether to continue with remote council and committee meetings or move to a hybrid model or in-person meetings. A report is expected to be brought to the next council meeting.
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