Today’s (Wednesday) announcement of the Restart BC Plan was good news for local businesses according to the Prince George Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Corrigall.
“I think what we heard today was a very pragmatic approach to how we can open the province back up,” he said, adding: “what everybody needs to keep in mind is that today’s announcement doesn’t mean to get together with twenty friends and throw a house party.”
However, Corrigall felt some parts of the announcement were ambiguous.
“There were certainly some encouraging pieces in there, and there are some parts that require a little more clarity.”
He specifically pointed to the lack of concrete dates attached to each phase of the Restart BC Plan as a potential hurdle.
Furthermore, he said some of the biggest challenges associated with COVID-19 come from the amount of individual responsibility involved in flattening the curve.
“There’s a genuine concern that once flu season comes back around that this version of COVID-19 or some other iteration will come back, but I think what we do today impacts the severity of that down the road.”
Finally, when asked about the possibility of some COVID-19 measures being implemented permanently (such as work-from-home options, and discouraging working while sick) Corrigal simply said: “It will be interesting to see how this shapes up.”