Châteauguay’s Mayor is encouraging people to cover their mouths in public during the COVID-19 crisis period. According to him, this situation is here to stay.
Translation courtesy Amanda Bennett
“I would ask you to protect yourselves from one another. Do not be afraid of using masks, no matter what people are saying,” urged Pierre-Paul Routhier during the city council meeting that took place on April 20th. “When you wear a mask, you aren’t protecting yourself, you are protecting other people. If you generate droplets, the other person won’t get them.”
On Wednesday, Horacio Arruda, the Director of Public Health, recommended the use of masks, but with a caveat. “This measure is effective if the mask is worn properly. We must not forget to wash our hands. And we mustn’t wind up lining up only one metre apart from one another,” he insisted.
He restated that we will be dealing with COVID-19 for many months or even years, a message that Mayor Routhier had conveyed on April 20th.
A Long Time Yet
“This problem will not resolve itself in two or three months. I’m not psychic, but I feel capable of analyzing the situation, and what is happening leads me to believe that the situation could last a very long time,” he stated.
He pointed out that the end of the crisis will require a vaccine, effective medication or a solid level of immunity within the population. None of that is likely in the near future. “We have not begun serological analyses. We don’t even know whether there are antibodies. And we aren’t even able to tell whether people who were infected by COVID will actually be immunized so that they won’t be infected again,” the Mayor illustrated.
