Tory says city has no plans to delay broad return to work for city employees amid concerns around Omicron variant

The Toronto City Hall is seen in this undated photo. (CP24 Chopper/Ted Brooks)

Mayor John Tory says that the city has no plans to delay a broader return to the office for thousands of its employees next month, despite concerns related to the Omicron variant.

The city announced last week that it would reopen all of its buildings at maximum capacity as of January 4 and direct employees who have been working remotely since the beginning of the pandemic to return to the office, at least on a part time basis.

The announcement, however, came within days of the Omicron variant first being detected in South Africa when information about its properties was still extremely limited.

Since then the variant has been blamed for a surge in cases in South Africa with some non-peer reviewed research pointing to it being much more infectious than the currently dominant Delta variant and possibly capable of reducing the efficacy of existing vaccines.

“I would just say to you for the moment that we're watching carefully and we're taking advice every single day but there is no plan to change the announced plans that we have to have for people to begin to come back to work at City Hall on January 4th,” Tory said on Tuesday when asked whether the city would revaluate its return to work plans in the face of the new variant. “Of course we will do what is prudent and responsible as we have tried to do throughout the pandemic but at the moment there are no changes to plans for me to share at this time.”

Ontario has seen its daily case counts double over the last month but the rise in transmission has been largely clustered in largely rural communities, particularly in northern Ontario.

In fact as of Monday, Toronto had among the lowest weekly incidence rates in Ontario when adjusted on a per capita basis (26th out of 34 public health units).

Hospitalization rates in the city also remain relatively low compared to previous waves of the pandemic.

“I'm not trying to minimize the Omicron variant for one second, we are watching it each and every day. But I will say that I think the overall reaction from say the business leaders that I met with last night seems to be one of you know thankfulness for the fact that we're watching this carefully and thankfulness for the fact that the City of Toronto and their governments have managed the pandemic reasonably well and put us in a position as a city where we can talk about having people come back to work,” Tory said on Tuesday. “I can also tell you that their enthusiasm for having people come back to work is as great as mine and they point out to me, without my putting words in their mouths, that a lot of the people who are coming back to work are very happy to have that experience, to have the experience of being with their colleagues again.”

In addition to office buildings, City Hall, Metro Hall and Toronto’s civic centres will be reopening to the public on Jan. 4.

There are also plans to resume holding council meetings in-person in the New Year, though councillors will still have the option of participating virtually.