Indications are that life as we know it won’t go back to normal by the long Victoria Day weekend.
May 24th marks the first long holiday of the summer, and is when the camping season traditionally begins.
Premier Dwight Ball says although many are anxious to get back to normal, the province is not ready to reopen at this point. He says it would be irresponsible to do so too early.
Ball says people must continue to stay home and stay apart.
Health Minister John Haggie says, “We are nowhere near ready.”
Haggie says there is a two week lag when identifying cases and that we are still waiting to see the results of Easter weekend.
He says the government has been looking into how it will gradually relax restrictions in the future, but not now.
The May 24th weekend is only a month away and Haggie says it will not be the traditional holiday that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are used to.
Haggie encourages people to plan how they will enjoy the weekend using the principles of physical distancing.
Meanwhile, If you’re moving your trailer from a campground to a different, unregulated location, the health minister says you must stop.
Haggie says he’s received several emails stating that as the weather improves and campgrounds and RV parks are forced shut, people are taking their trailers and finding gravel pits to do there what is not permitted through either public health orders, or common sense.
Haggie says there has been a ban in place on gravel pit camping that goes back to 2010.
He says social gatherings of five people, within your bubble, are the maximum. If you are going to go gravel pit, you will run into problems from a variety of sources, not the least of which will be your health.
Further, the health minister says they have seen day-to-day changes around recommendations, and it’s important they take those in the spirit of adapting to the new information they get from public health officials across Canada and the world.
Masks have been recommended for those out in public who are well and may run into some challenges with physical distancing, but Haggie claims wearing a mask is not a substitute for physical distancing.
He says he’s also received correspondence from another group of essential workers who are less used to seeing masks in their environment.
That according to Haggie is in banks. He appreciates the challenges, security and safety issues around that, but people need to look at adapting to their way of working to allow for a new reality, as a mask in a bank is no longer what it used to be.
