A C T U A L I T É S • N E W S
COVID ACTIVE CASES DROP AS STUDENTS RETURN TO SCHOOL
STEPHEN JEFFERY stephen.jeffery@eap.on.ca
All residents at 18 long-term care homes and six retirement homes had received their first dose. Dr. Roumeliotis said the health unit would receive a tray, or 950 doses, of Pfizer-BioN- Tech vaccines this week after last week’s absence due to a Canada-wide shortage. Moderna vaccines would also be sent to the health unit for use in the northern portion of Akwesasne. Meanwhile, the Casselman testing centre will move from the EOHU’s office to the Hawkesbury General Hospital facility in the town in the coming days. Dr. Roumeliotis said space was needed at the EOHU to set up a vaccination centre for the region. Outbreaks An outbreak at Foyer-St-Jacques Nursing Home in Embrun was declared over on Monday. Residences in Prescott-Russell that continued to be affected included Centre d’accueil Roger-S é guin in Clarence Creek, Manoir Carillon in Chute-à-Blondeau, Rideau Place in Hawkesbury, Valoris-211 Russell Road in Cheney, and Pinecrest Nursing Home in Plantagenet. Only Rideau Place and Valoris had resident cases, with the remainder confined to staff outbreaks. The region There were 109 active cases in the Pres- cott-Russell region on Monday, including 40 in Russell, 26 in Clarence-Rockland, 19 in Hawkesbury, 14 in Alfred-Plantagenet, 4 in Champlain, 4 in The Nation, and 2 in East Hawkesbury. There were none in Casselman.
Prescott-Russell entered February with almost half the number of active cases recorded during the same period in January. There were 109 active cases in the Prescott-Russell region on Monday, com- pared to the 213 reported at the start of last month. The area’s active case number continued to decline after a January 11 high of 254. The wider Eastern Ontario Health Unit (EOHU) region recorded 36 new cases over the weekend, 10 of which were detected in Prescott-Russell. There were 377 active cases across the EOHU on Monday, which marked the first time since the start of the year that the region had fewer than 400. EOHU Medical Officer of Health Dr. Paul Roumeliotis said the trend had been en- couraging, but numbers remained high. He said more rapid testing will be introduced at schools as about 30,000 students in the region returned to in-person learning this week. “Testing is part of our toolkit, but testing is not prevention,” he said. “It’s part of the whole approach, which is screening at the door, screening at home, wearing masks, and the physical distancing which is critically important.” Vaccines More than 2500 vaccine doses were ad- ministered in the EOHU area as of Monday.
Les écoles ont repris l’apprentissage en personne cette semaine alors que le nombre de cas de COVID-19 actifs dans la région continue de baisser — photo d’archives
HERITAGE PROPERTY QUESTION FOR HAWKESBURY COUNCIL
GREGG CHAMBERLAIN gregg.chamberlain@eap.on.ca
Dominique Dussault, interim chief admin- istrator, told council that the planning depart- ment is occupied with finishing the revised Community Improvement Plan (CIP) for the municipality. She noted that the department could investigate and provide council with a report on the procedure for heritage property designation after staff finish the CIP. Council members agreed with that sug- gestion. Mayor Paula Assaly also noted that property owners need to remember that there is a difference between a building or property designated a municipal heritage site and one like the Macdonnell-Williamson House near Chute-à-Blondeau in East Hawkesbury Town- ship, which is part of the Ontario Heritage Trust. No significant changes are allowed to the exterior or interior of that building that would affect its overall heritage value.
Some property owners in Hawkesbury wonder what the process is for declaring a building a heritage site. Councillor Antonios Tsourounakis brought the issue up during the January 25 council session after receiving queries from resi- dents about how they could access federal or provincial aid grants for heritage buildings. “There’s a lot of information out there,” said Councillor Robert Lefebvre, citing the Ontario Heritage Act as one example. “But there are also a lot of processes involved. It (heritage designation) is a very tricky area to navigate.” Lefebvre noted that Hawkesbury may have once had its own procedure for declaring a local building or property as a heritage site but he was not certain if it was still in force. Les édifices historiques comme la maison Macdonnell-Williamson dans le canton de Hawkesbury-Est sont maintenus dans leur état d’origine selon les consignes de la Fiducie du patrimoine ontarien. Le conseil municipal de Hawkesbury a reçu des demandes de certains propriétaires locaux concernant la procédure à suivre pour faire désigner un bâtiment ou un terrain comme site patrimonial. —photo d’archives
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