Image Credit: CFJC Today / Jill Sperling

By Jill Sperling

COVID-19

Kamloops businesses welcome masking policy, adapt to other COVID-19 restrictions

Nov 20, 2020 | 4:27 PM

KAMLOOPS — The alarming rise in COVID-19 cases across B.C. has led to tighter restrictions. For the next two weeks, gatherings are mostly limited to members of the same household.

In-person worship services, community events and high-intensity group fitness classes have been suspended.

Kamloops residents are now masking up before heading into stores. This isn’t new for most, but now all customers will be required to don this layer of protection against COVID-19. The move comes as a relief to many in the business community, including Kamloops Chamber of Commerce President Tyson Andrykew.

“Internally at the Chamber, our board of directors and our staff had been polling members over the last few weeks to find out where the business community stood as a whole on the issue and by and large the community really wanted to see this,” Andrykew said. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry had avoided a mask mandate through eight months of the pandemic, but on Thursday (Nov. 19), she changed her tone.

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“Based on continued requests, particularly from the retail and other public sectors to have more explicit direction for the use of masks in indoor public and retail spaces, I’ve asked the Minister of Public Safety and the Solicitor General to issue a requirement for the wearing of masks for all indoor public and retail spaces for staff and customers except where eating or drinking,” Henry said.

This comes as the Kamloops Chamber was preparing to lobby government for such a mandate.

“We were trying to find out which body of government is best to ask,” Adrykew said, “whether it’s the [City of Kamloops] to do a bylaw or regional health officer to put in a regional restriction or to send it to the province.”

You will find mandatory mask signs posted on businesses across the city. At the Kamloops YMCA, a mandatory mask policy is among a number of changes the fitness centre has had to implement.

“As of last night we stopped our intense group fitness classes as per the public health order,” said Kamloops YMCA-YWCA CEO Colin Reid. “We are continuing to do low-impact group fitness classes both here and at our John Tod site.”

For staff, the latest order from Dr. Henry has made COVID-19 guidelines less ambiguous.

“I think the firmer the line all of us have the better off we are, because then as humans we understand, okay that’s the rule let’s follow it,” Reid said. “But, if that’s not the rule then doubt creeps in and people start to bend the rules a little bit.”

The Kamloops Airport had mandated masks inside the terminal in October.

“It just reinforces that we’re trying to follow the safety recommendations,” said Managing Director Ed Ratuski. “It just reinforces that it’s a necessary element that the general public should participate in.”

Non-essential travel is not recommended. The result of this guidance is yet to be seen at the already-quiet airport.

“Largely, the majority of people traveling through Kamloops are on essential business travel or essential personal travel only,” Ratuski said.