The prime minister François Legault
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July 16, 2020 16h02
Updated at 17h43
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The fate of the bars will be fixed in the next few days, promises Dubé
Roxanne Ocampo
The Canadian Press
The fate of the bars will be fixed in the next few days
The minister of Health, Christian Dubé, does not hide his concern over the rise in new infections reported in the last days. It fails, however, to attribute this renewed contamination of evenings watered where the virus will spread with greater ease.
“I have not yet made the link between the increase of cases in general and the bars. I’m going to rely heavily on the public health in the coming hours,” he said Thursday afternoon.
The case daily refuse to pass under the bar of the hundred since last weekend. There have been a Thursday, there were 142 new cases across the province.
The minister wants to be able to trace them in detail and determine if the infections related to bars have occurred since 10 July, when the imposition of a curfew at 1 a.m. and the prohibition to sell alcohol after midnight.
The national director of public health, Horacio Arruda, just had to talk to his regional counterparts to this topic later in the day.
“We are doing a very sophisticated analysis, explained Dr. Arruda in point of press. It may be that we say that we need another day of data to see what happens before taking a position.”
Dr. Arruda says to study several scenarios and does not exclude the possibility of recommending the closure of certain licensed premises only, rather than imposing a reconfinement in the province as a whole.
“We must not wait and it is too late. But it’s also important not to act too early, and penalizing a sector that is not the only source of problems”, he argues.
Even if the bars are recognized as nests of contamination anywhere in the world, the private parties could also be to blame according to him.
In the morning, prime minister François Legault had said to expect a recommendation by Dr. Arruda.
Call to the screening in Montreal
The health authorities in montreal reported Thursday, at least 45 cases involving 14 institutions, having launched last Saturday to a call screening for all of the people who frequented bars of the city since the beginning of the month. Five cases have also been connected to the Mile Public House in the quartier DIX30, in Brossard.
The answer to that call screening has been so strong that the waiting times for testing have exploded, forcing the regional directorate of public health to quickly increase its capacity without an appointment.
“I did not like the images that I saw yesterday queues”, admitted the minister Dubé, speaking with the journalists in front of the mobile site Louvain, one of the two screening clinics that are added on Thursday.
Its opening hours were again extended, and staff from other centres, integrated health and social services of Montreal was expected in the reinforcement during the visit of the minister, who said to see a good break-in for the second wave of COVID-19.
In the queue behind him, Xavier Bergeron, 26 years old, was in his second attempt to undergo a screening test.
After making a half-turn by going into a clinic where the queue stretched for about one mile, the day before, the employee of the bar decided to present the new mobile site of the rue Saint-Denis, even before its opening on Thursday at 10am.
At 14h, he is always waiting its turn, incredulous.
A few meters in front of him, Anaïs Michaud and Alexandre Fisette, 35 years, shared his perplexity. “If it takes about a week to the government to successfully adapt to a directive that he himself has given, it gives me little hope for when there will be an unexpected”, said Alexandre Fisette.
