![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Moving into Stage Three
Jul. 13th, 2020 03:50 pmIt's now official: Ottawa will move into stage three of re-opening on Friday. That means movie theatres and indoor areas of restaurants will be allowed to reopen, although still at reduced capacity. Indoor gatherings of up to 50 people and outdoor gatherings of up to 100 will be allowed. I guess we'll have to see which businesses - those that have survived up to now - will take the premier up on the offer. Buffets are still a no-no. So are overnight kids' camps. Playground equipment? We'll see.
Public libraries are allowing readers to actually pick up their holds inside at some branches but it would be nice if they'd reopen for browsers (of the human variety) again. A number of bookstores have reopened, including some that sell second-hand books, so I don't see a lot of difference, although perhaps I'm being disloyal to my profession when I say that!
The situation with office workers remains murky as far as I can gather. I suspect maybe in September with kids back in school and day care facilities allowed to accommodate more children, offices will start to re-open. I haven't heard when routine doctor and dentist appointments will resume although there again, I suspect some time in late fall, once a backlog of more urgent non-covid problems has been whittled down to manageable proportions. That's assuming, of course, that we're not deep into a second wave of Covid-19 by then!
We won't be able to salvage any large summer events at this point - music festivals, Shakespeare and Odyssey Theatre in the park, travel to far-flung locations - but I'm cautiously optimistic that summer won't be a total loss.
Public libraries are allowing readers to actually pick up their holds inside at some branches but it would be nice if they'd reopen for browsers (of the human variety) again. A number of bookstores have reopened, including some that sell second-hand books, so I don't see a lot of difference, although perhaps I'm being disloyal to my profession when I say that!
The situation with office workers remains murky as far as I can gather. I suspect maybe in September with kids back in school and day care facilities allowed to accommodate more children, offices will start to re-open. I haven't heard when routine doctor and dentist appointments will resume although there again, I suspect some time in late fall, once a backlog of more urgent non-covid problems has been whittled down to manageable proportions. That's assuming, of course, that we're not deep into a second wave of Covid-19 by then!
We won't be able to salvage any large summer events at this point - music festivals, Shakespeare and Odyssey Theatre in the park, travel to far-flung locations - but I'm cautiously optimistic that summer won't be a total loss.
