The City of North Bay and many of its partners held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon to address the ongoing concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event comes only hours after the Doug Ford put the province under a State of Emergency.
Health officials, city staff and emergency personnel addressed the media from the podium.
Dr. Jim Chirico, the Chief Medical officer at the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit, says to date, there are still no cases in the district.
"It is important to understand that the risk in our community remains low," said Chirico.
"I want to stress, to date, there have been zero cases of COVID-19 in our district. It is anticipated that COVID-19 will end up circulating in the community and there will be positive cases and sadly there will be more deaths."
Chirico doesn't mean to minimize but he points out that 3,500 people die of flu every year in Canada.
"This is not to minimize what we are facing with COVID-19 but we absolutely need to take this seriously. Do we need to prepare for the worst? We are," he said.
Paul Heinrich, CEO of the North Bay Regional Health Centre, expressed the same sentiments.
"Canada's health care experts, hospitals and their health care workers to prepare for the worst," said Heinrich.
"As president and CEO of the North Bay Regional Health Centre, I want to assure all of you that our organization is taking this situation very seriously. We have and we will continue to take all necessary actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 while providing essential care to those that need it the most. Today I want to assure our community that we are ready. We have an incredible team of front-line support staff that are working around the clock to provide care for all of our patients while we finalize our preparation for the inevitable higher patient volume."
Heinrich says North Bay is one of only 17 centres in the province with a unique assessment centre which is located outside the North Bay Regional Health Centre.
"We are ahead of many communities in our preparation,"
"This assessment centre was able to take the pressure off our emergency department while also minimizing the potential spread of infection. Our community thanks these staff who have helped in the creation of the assessment centre as well as the physicians, nurses and other health care providers providing front line care."
Chirico noted that his staff have fielded an incredible amount of calls but very few ended up leading to a test.
"Most people do not need to be tested," said Chirico.
"We have been taking and fielded over 900 phone calls on our Health Unit hotline and of those very few required testing. I would say between 20 and 30."
The city of North Bay has taken more preventative steps today as well by closing more city facilities to the public including City Hall.
"We are announcing beginning Wednesday morning City Hall will be closed to the public and we have been in touch with DSSAB and they are in full agreement," said Al McDonald, North Bay's Mayor during the press conference.
"Also other city facilities such as public works, parks, our wastewater plant, our water treatment plant will be closed to the public except for appointments only."
David Euler, City of North Bay CEO, insisted that the closures of public buildings to the public will not mean layoffs for city staff.
There have not been any layoffs and there won't be.
"We are working on other things, the staff at Memorial Gardens are working in preparation for an assessment and testing centre should it need to be popped up and we are working with the hospital and the health unit to make sure we are ready to go," said Euler.
