Toronto sets January date for city workers to return to the office, amid rising COVID-19 cases, Omicron uncertainty
TORONTO has decided to establish a minimum of 70,000 masks in its distribution centres because of the continued shortage, according to the city.
With the mask distribution centres set to open in the coming days, the city will have created more than enough to distribute to employees, staff and customers, Mayor John Tory confirmed Monday.
“We’re creating more masks just in time for the first day of the new normal for the city,” he said on Monday.
As part of the mandatory mask rule, Toronto workers will be able to take home the mask for free if they have been provided one in the city’s distribution centres.
“It’s not necessarily the perfect solution, but it’s not the worst solution either – it’s a temporary solution,” Tory said.
Tory announced the plan during a regular COVID-19 briefing on Monday.
He announced that the city will open distribution centres and begin a drive to create some 5,000 masks per day, in addition to the 3,000 masks per day that will be initially distributed in the distribution centres.
“The mask distribution centres will be here for a full year and we will be providing masks with the promise that they will be for sale to workers and others alike,” Tory said.
“We will also be putting on a drive in our stores… to produce as many masks as possible out of a very limited supply that we have. So that is exactly what we’re moving toward.”
The province recently ordered provincial grocery stores to stop selling masks, but they also made it illegal to produce masks from your home in Ontario and ordered mask producers to stop selling to mask manufacturers.
“We will see what our masks look like and we won’t be providing masks in our stores, but we will continue to see if we can get the masks that we need from a much more controlled supply outside of Canada with a controlled
