On Thursday (July 2), Peterborough Public Health issued its first extended heat warning of the season.

On Wednesday (July 1), Environment Canada issued a heat warning for much of southern Ontario, for a long-duration heat event expected to extend from Thursday through Sunday (July 5) and potentially into early next week.

Daytime high temperatures will be in the low to mid thirties, with overnight lows in the low twenties providing little or no relief from the heat.

Environment Canada has updated its heat warning with the following forecast for temperatures from Thursday to Sunday:

• Maximum temperatures Thursday: 32 to 35°C (humidex 35 to 38)
• Maximum temperatures Friday: 32 to 34°C (humidex 36 to 40)
• Maximum temperatures Saturday: 32 to 35°C (humidex 36 to 40)
• Maximum temperatures Sunday: 31 to 35°C (humidex 37 to 42)

To help people cope with the heat, One Roof Community Centre is distributing refillable water bottles and bottled water through its community meal program.

The City of Peterborough offers water refill stations at the Peterborough Marina (92 George St. N.), Eastgate Memorial Park (2150 Ashburnham Dr.), and Beavermead Park (2011 Ashburnham Dr.).

The Peterborough Public Library (345 Aylmer St. N.) is also providing refillable water bottles and will be able to refill water bottles during its curbside pickup hours: 1 to 3 p.m and 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday and 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

In addition to the water refill stations, municipal tap water is available in public washrooms at municipal parks, including King Edward Park and Millennium Park.

Extreme heat events are a potentially significant health risk and can have a severe impact on the health of vulnerable populations including infants, the elderly, shut-ins, persons with chronic diseases, people taking certain medications or using illicit drugs, the morbidly obese. and the marginally housed.

Heat-related illnesses such as dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke are preventable. Drink plenty of water, even if you don’t feel thirsty. This decreases your risk of dehydration. Thirst is not a good indicator of dehydration.

The risk of heat-related illness increases with the amount of time spent in the heat, the temperature, and an individual’s sensitivity to heat. If you feel faint, find it hard to breathe, or feel confused and disoriented because of the heat, call 911 or go to the hospital’s emergency department. Remember to check in with family, friends, and neighbours, especially seniors who live on their own.

Extreme heat is often accompanied by poor air quality. Peterborough Public Health encourages you to monitor the Air Quality Health Index found at www.airqualityontario.com and plan outdoor activities accordingly.

Environment Canada has issued a heat warning for the southern Kawarthas, including Peterborough, Kawartha Lakes, and Northumberland.

A long-duration heat event affecting much of southern Ontario is expected Thursday (July 2) through Sunday (July 5) and potentially into early next week.

Daytime high temperatures in the low to mid thirties with overnight lows near 20°C are expected.

Hot and humid air can also bring deteriorating air quality and can result in the air quality health Index to approach the high risk category.

Extreme heat affects everyone. However, the risks are greater for young children, pregnant women, older adults, people with chronic illnesses and people working or exercising outdoors.

Drink plenty of water even before you feel thirsty and stay in a cool place.

Never leave people or pets inside a parked vehicle.

Watch for the symptoms of heat illness: dizziness/fainting, nausea/vomiting, rapid breathing and heartbeat, extreme thirst, and decreased urination with unusually dark urine.

Two museums in the City and County of Peterborough have announced their reopening plans during stage two of Ontario’s COVID-19 recovery plan, but with some changes to normal operations due to the pandemic.

Peterborough Museum and Archives (Museum Drive at 300 Hunter Street East) is reopening to the public beginning Monday, July 6th, but by appointment only.

Lang Pioneer Village Museum (104 Lang Road in Keene) is reopening to the public on Wednesday, July 8th, but only for booked guided tours.

At Peterborough Museum and Archives, only only one visitor or group up to 10 people will be allowed into the museum at a time, with exclusive access to the exhibits, during an assigned time slot of 50 minutes. The museum is not currently offering guided tours or audio tours.

In addition to requiring appointments for visitors, Peterborough Museum and Archives has temporarily removed interactive activities from exhibits, put in place enhanced cleaning protocols, and is making hand sanitizer available for visitors as part of its new measures for the safety of visitors and staff.

Between each visit, staff will clean high-touch surfaces to prepare for the next visitor or group.

At Lang Pioneer Village Museum, guided tours will be limited to a maximum of nine people — who must be from the same family unit or social circle — per tour. Staggered tours will begin every 15 minutes and must be booked in advance.

While the museum’s snack shop will not be open, packaged snacks and drinks as well as items from the Museum Shop can be purchased at the time of booking.

Visitors will be required to self-screen prior to coming onsite, observe physical distancing with other groups, and to wear face masks when inside buildings.

Peterborough Museum and Archives will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday and 12 to 5 p.m. on Sunday and holidays (the museum is closed on Saturdays). To make an appointment to visit the museum, call 705-743-5180 during operating hours.

While there is no admission fee to visit the museum, a suggested donation is $10 per family or group (debit and credit car preferred). For more information about the museum, visit peterborough.ca/museum.

Lang Pioneer Village Museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Tours must be booked in advance at lang-pioneer-village-museum.myshopify.com.

The cost for a guided tour is $40 for up to nine people. For more information about the museum, visit langpioneervillage.ca.

Peterborough’s Grandparents of the Year are Darlene Buchanan of Havelock and Gordon Rosborough of Selwyn Township.

For the past 33 years, Community Care has encouraged students from grade 2 through 6 in the City and County of Peterborough to nominate a grandparent or a special older person in their life for the Grandparent of the Year award.

This year, Community Care received 60 nominations from area children.

“The children shared so many wonderful stories and artwork with us,” says Community Care executive director Belair. “It is always difficult for the judges to choose.”

Two awards are presented: one for primary division (grades 2 and 3) and one for junior division (grades 4 to 6). There are also two honourable mentions in each category.

The top three nominees in the primary level were Darlene Buchanan (nominated by Ali Buchanan), Jack Berry (nominated by Wynn Jack Jennings), and Donna and Harold Wall (nominated by Katelyn Wrigley).

In the junior division, the top three nominees were Gordon Rosborough (nominated by Natalie Grace Garbutt), Paul Mooney (nominated by Mateo Mooney), and Amber Reid (nominated by Locklin Weight).

The title sponsor of the event is Nexicom and the media sponsor is YourTV Peterborough-Lindsay, which produced a video of the virtual awards ceremony (see below).

VIDEO: Grandparent of the Year award ceremony

With no new cases of COVID-19 detected in the Peterborough region over the past 10 days, mandatory face masking remains “an area of active study” for now, according to Peterborough’s medical officer of health.

During her weekly media briefing held Tuesday (June 30), Dr. Rosana Salvaterra said the wearing of a face mask, particularly by anyone receiving personal or health care services, remains a “strongly recommended” practice.

“In places where there’s high transmission and higher risk, it may make sense to move to mandatory masking as a next step,” she said. “We’ve seen that happen in places like Windsor-Essex where there has been a very high incidence of COVID-19. In those situations, the potential benefit of wearing masks may outweigh the possible harms.”

“There’s definitely a lot to study and carefully weigh before we go to that next step here in Peterborough,” Dr. Salvaterra added. “In the meantime, it remains a very strong recommendation.”

As of 4 p.m. on Monday (June 29), the total number of positive cases in Peterborough city and county, Curve Lake, and Hiawatha remained at 95 with no new cases reported over the past 10 days.

Of the positive cases, 91 have been resolved while two cases remain active — two less over the past week — with two COVID-19 related deaths reported since the pandemic began. For the sixth consecutive week, there are no institutional outbreaks reported.

Meanwhile, an estimated 16,600 people have been tested, including 1,200 during the course of the past week. One of every nine residents in Peterborough Public Health’s catchment area has been tested — a testing rate of 11.2 percent.

Locally there have been 64 positive cases detected per 100,000 people, compared to Ontario’s rate of 235 positive cases per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, the local incidence rate over the past week is zero positive cases per 100,000 people, again much lower than the provincial incidence rate of 9.7 cases per 100,000 people.

“We’re in excellent shape but we’re only two weeks into phase two (of the provincial recovery plan),” Dr. Salvaterra cautioned.

“The provincial (recovery) plan estimates a minimum of four to six weeks for each of the phases. I know there are discussions at the provincial level as to what phase three will look like, but we have to look behind — recognizing that any cases that emerge now reflect transmission that occurred two weeks ago.”

“Every day there’s quite a lot of tension, not knowing if it’s going to be a good day or whether we’ll discover that transmission has taken place and we’re dealing with something as bad as an outbreak that we can see is happening as close as Kingston.”

There have been 27 positive COVID-19 cases related to a nail salon in Kingston. Six of the cases are salon employees, six are salon clients, and the remainder are close contacts — including an employee who works at another salon.

“I’m very encouraged and I’m hopeful we will be able to move to phase three in a couple of weeks,” Dr. Salvaterra added.

That said, Dr. Salvaterra made it very clear that COVID-19 is going to be part of our collective lives for quite awhile yet.

“Until there’s a vaccine, I’m afraid we’re not going to be done with COVID-19. All we can do is try to contain it as fast as we can. We’re not on the other side. We’ve had a little bit of a respite. If we are really good at practising all the public health measures we may be able to keep the second wave at bay for longer, (but) we’re looking at 18 to 24 months before it will be over.”

Dr. Salvaterra also spoke to a recently approved amendment to Ontario public health legislation that allows boards of health to collect information from positive COVID-19 test recipients and report that data.

“We know that socio-demographic and socio-economic factors, like race and income, can affect people’s health outcomes,” she said. “Collecting this information will help us improve our public health response to the pandemic.”

Going forward, those who test positive for COVID-19, as well as those who tested positive previously, will be asked the following:

• Including yourself, how many family members live in your household?
• Which race category best describes you?
• What was your total household income before taxes in 2019?
• What language did you first learn at home and still understand?
• In which of Canada’s two official languages, English or French, are you most comfortable?

“Providing this information is voluntary,” stressed Dr. Salvaterra.

“I hope people will feel safe enough to share this information us so that we are able to tell a more complete story of the impact of COVID-19 on our community. We look forward to using the data respectfully and carefully to measure and improve our efforts to control the spread of the virus.”

Also participating in Wednesday’s media briefing was Peterborough Mayor Diane Therrien as well as Selwyn Mayor and Peterborough Board of Health Chair Andy Mitchell.