TORONTO -- Mayor John Tory says that city officials have had some discussions around whether other retail businesses, such as shopping malls, should be allowed to remain open in the face of a worsening COVID-19 outbreak.

On Monday, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health asked all restaurants to halt dine-in service and appealed to bars, movie theatres, nightclubs and concert venues to close their doors.

So far, similar recommendations have not been made for non-essential retail businesses such as clothing stores, though many have chosen to close without a formal request being made by public health officials.

At this point most malls in the city do remain open, though largely with curtailed hours. Cadillac Fairview for instance has reduced its hours to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Speaking with CP24 on Tuesday morning, Tory said that officials “have been talking about” whether shopping malls should stay open at all, especially in light of advice from Ontario’s chief medical officer of health warning against gatherings of 50 or more people.

“We have been talking about it and I would just say we are looking at these things on a one-by-one basis,” he said. “The medical officer of health is concerned that you don’t want to shut people off from some of the necessities they might need so grocers and pharmacies will stay open no matter what but we will see. I was questioning yesterday how many necessities you need to get at a mall at this point in time if you can go to the grocery store or the pharmacy.”

Tory confident businesses will heed advice

While the recommendation from Toronto’s medical officer of health for restaurants to suspend dine-in service and some other businesses to close is precisely that, she has threatened to use the city’s powers under the Health Protection and Promotion Act to force closures if need be.

On Tuesday, Tory said that he is hopeful that such drastic measures won’t have to be taken.

He said that most restaurant owners he talked to yesterday, for example, were willing to close, especially given the fact that the “economics of them continuing in business are just not good” amid a significant decline in customers.

“I am very optimistic that the vast majority of people in this business are complying with the strong recommendation from the medical officer of health and that is all in the cause of stopping the spread of the virus by having fewer places where people can congregate or come into contact with one another,” he said.