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Director of emergency management Merrick Brown provides an update on the city's COVID-19 reopening plans on July 7. (CHAT News Photo)
Things will be different

Medicine Hat City Hall to open to the public next week

Jul 7, 2020 | 12:12 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – City Hall is next on the list of facilities to reopen as Medicine Hat emerges from the lockdown necessitated by COVID-19.

Merrick Brown, the city’s director of emergency management, says Medicine Hat City Hall will open to the public on July 13. As with every reopening, things will look different than the last time the public visited.

Brown said there will be measures to make physical distancing easier, barriers will be in place and some areas will be off-limits to the public.

A commissionaire will greet people at the First Street doors and ask for any visitor’s name and phone number. Brown said that is for contact tracing purposes.

There will not be a mask requirement at City Hall, but masks will be available for the public if they want and staff have them available to increase everyone’s comfort level on a case-by-case basis.

There will also be capacity limits of 10 public members on each floor.

Those who would prefer to continue to do business with City Hall the way they have during the closure can still do that, said Brown, as those alternative methods will stay in place.

“If you don’t want to come into City Hall that’s okay,” said Brown. “In fact, we’re still encouraging people not to necessarily come into City Hall if you don’t have to because there’s still other ways to do business with the City. So, all of the items we’ve had over the past three or four months here with City Hall being closed, all of those things are still going to continue.”

With 10 active COVID cases in the city as of yesterday’s update on alberta.ca, Brown urged people to continue to be cautious, follow the public health advice and avoid complacency.

“The majority of the outbreaks that we’re seeing right now, very different from what we saw three months ago where the outbreaks were health care facilities or long-term care facilities,” said Brown. “The majority of the outbreaks that we’re actually seeing now are social gatherings.”

Across the province, the group seeing the most infections is those ages 20-29, Brown said, but older age groups are most affected by the virus. He said the city can put any amount of controls in place but the best control will be the actions of people themselves.

Information on city services and departments can be found on the city’s website.

Mayor Ted Clugston also teased an upcoming announcement by the city, which is expected sometime early next week.

“We may have some interesting information for you early next week so stay tuned,” said Clugston. “Not specifically COVID related, but kind of COVID related.”