As you may know, governments and institutions around the world have been responding in various ways to the threats posed by COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. The situation is now accelerating very rapidly. Two days ago, the World Health Organization determined that COVID-19 has reached the level of a global pandemic. Yesterday, among many other developments in Canada, the governments of Quebec and Alberta advised that indoor gatherings of more than 250 people should be cancelled, and the Ontario government announced that all public schools will remain closed for two weeks following the March break. The Sports Village has been monitoring the evolving nature of the COVID-19 outbreak very closely and acting as necessary with the guidance and the advice of York Region Health Services and public health authorities and the concerns of our customers and guests. We have been informing all our users and our community accordingly, through website updates about our preventative protocols for disinfection and sanitizing and other related information provided by public health authorities. After careful consideration of developments over the past 24 hours, we have made the following additional decisions. • We have voluntarily decided to suspend all programming, including all ice rentals, leagues, and camps, and to temporarily close The Sports Village to the public as a preventative measure.
This decision is effective Saturday, March 14 until Monday April 6th , or until such time that it is safe to resume our operations for our customers and staff. One of the key factors in these decisions is the need to foster a degree of “social distancing”, as recommended by public health authorities. With this in mind, our goal is to help interrupt the chain of transmission in the wider community, thereby protecting vulnerable individuals and ensuring that our health care system will not become overburdened. I would like to extend special thanks to the dedicated staff members who have been involved in monitoring and analyzing this evolving situation and in charting the way forward for our phenomenal sports community at this difficult time. Your dedication is remarkable and deeply appreciated.
We appreciate that the global COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly worrisome, and that the changes we have just announced will require very significant adjustments on everyone’s part, your patience and understanding will be much appreciated. We are very confident that we as a community will meet this challenge successfully. We will continue to update our customers through email and on our web site during this time.
Respectfully,
The Sports Village
