City Council Unanimous: Extended patios to remain until October 31st 2021

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Temporary Patio program renewed for a full year

Nanaimo diners will be able to have an outdoor patio experience for the next year. City council voted unanimously to extend its temporary restaurant patio program until October 31st, 2021. The city's general manager of development services says 15 city restaurants and cafes signed up for the program in May and every single one urged the city to extend it. Dale Lindsay told council the program is paid for by the restaurant owners and city officials consider it a success.

"This temp program has doubled the amount of patio areas that we have in our public realm. So I think that alone has been a great outcome of this program, more areas for people to congregate, especially now during the times of pandemic and especially now with how with how difficult it is for many of these restaurants to run on reduced internal numbers.”—Dale Lindsay, City of Nanaimo General Manager of Development Services.

The city has also agreed to extend its pre-approvals for all future requests for patio liquor licenses until the end of October next year, as requested by the province. Lindsay says the patio program remains open to other businesses that may want to join.

Risk remains high for seniors in care homes

Families of people in care homes are calling on the province to expand their visitation rights. Dozens held a rally on the lawn of the BC Legislature today. They say care homes have the ability to designate family members as "essential visitors" but so far, most facilities are refusing to grant the designations. BC's Advocate for Seniors has called on health officials to weigh the risk of COVID exposure against the poor quality of life for seniors who have been cut off from regular family visits since the start of the pandemic. BC's Provincial Health Officer says she's committed to expanding visits to care homes, but Dr. Bonnie Henry says the risk remains high.

"We've seen in Quebec and Ontario, in particular, that they did expand quite a lot and they're now starting to see larger outbreaks in their care homes. It is extremely challenging thing for us to find that balance and we will continue to look at and modify and support families to be with their loved ones in care homes."—Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.

Currently, there are COVID-19 outbreaks at fourteen care homes in the province.

Tuesday evening COVID-19 update

Today's COVID-19 numbers show 105 new infections have been confirmed over the past 24 hours, but none is in the Island Health region. There has been one death from the virus, at a long term care home in the Fraser Health Region. Currently, there are five active cases of COVID-19 in Island Health, and 1268, province-wide.