Esterhazy town facilities set to reopen after temporary COVID shutdown

A town in east-central Saskatchewan closed some of its facilities to try and curb the spread of COVID-19, and it’s now close to reopening them.

On Oct. 7, Esterhazy closed down all town-run facilities. That includes the town hall, the rink and the community centre.

The choice was originally made to try and stop more patients from ending up in hospital.

As of Friday, there were 16 people in hospital in the central-east region, with seven in intensive care.

Mike Thorley, the chief administrative officer for Esterhazy, explained the thought process.

“Our local hospital was full or overflowing … We wanted to make our staff safe so that we didn’t have anything coming through our doors as best as we possibly could do it, and also keep the rest of the community safe,” he explained.

Esterhazy High School also switched to remote learning from Oct. 1 until Friday. That played a part in the town’s decision as well.

“If kids aren’t going to school during the day, we didn’t want them coming to, say, a hockey practice in the evening and still having that open, so that was just one example we used,” he continued.

The town plans to reopen the facilities Monday, the same day the school is set to return to in-person learning.

“We just wanted to keep everyone away for this time. Hopefully it was long enough so that there’ll be a stint where we can get past this and get on with our regular, daily operations,” Thorley said.

“We were trying to be proactive, I think. That was the biggest thing.”

On Thursday, Health Minister Paul Merriman said that the province’s COVID measures are a “base layer of restrictions and recommendations,” and that municipalities are free to put stronger rules in place.

Moving forward, it doesn’t seem like Esterhazy plans to do that.

“Definitely, we are not over and above what the province is requiring because the province has given certain guidelines …,” Thorley said. “We follow them and we want to continue to follow them.”