Businesses should continue to follow public health orders, says UM population health expert
Dr. Joss Reimer (MD/08, MPH/13), Manitoba’s medical officer of health and director of undergraduate medical education in community health sciences at the University of Manitoba, believes that re-opening the province for business following the peak of COVID-19 will be challenging.
In a story in the Winnipeg Sun, Reimer said that determining the peak of infections (and therefore becoming ready to re-open) will be difficult to identify in Manitoba due to measures taken to flatten the curve.
“One of the goals to returning to normalcy is to do that when we have enough people in our community that are no longer vulnerable to becoming infected,” she said. “Once there’s enough immunity going through the population overall is when we can start to increase our interactions with each other with less chance of transmission,”
Dr. Reimer explained that the best approach is to continue to follow public health orders, which will be extended to April 28. This means staying home, washing your hands and avoiding contact with other people, and wearing a mask to help stop the spread.
“It will not prevent people from getting COVID-19, but it will help prevent them from passing it on even if they are unaware they have it,” she noted.