HALIFAX: New public health restrictions announced last week will affect teams, leagues and organizations around the Strait area.
“We’re allowed to have games, whether it’s minor hockey, all the way up the Mooseheads. We have a professional lacrosse team, they’re allowed to have games,” Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Strang said at a provincial briefing on Dec. 13. “There are limits on the audience, and how many people can be spectators.”
Among the new rules rolled out on Dec. 13 was that school sports are limited to team skills training only, with classes finishing last Friday at most public schools across the province.
School gyms can be used after hours by fully vaccinated Nova Scotians, the province noted.
“What we said is no tournaments,” Strang told reporters. “Individual games… and limiting travel, certainly for minor sports; it’s within your community, or between communities. There’s no bringing in people from across the province, whether it’s a basketball or a hockey tournament, or dance competition.”
Until at least the new year, the province confirmed there will be enhanced physical distance and mask requirements, specifically a physical distance of two metres. They said places like fitness and recreation facilities can operate at the maximum capacity possible with physical distancing.
The province said there will be gathering limits up to half-capacity, to a maximum of 150 people indoors, for sports events.
“If it’s a small facility, they all have a legal fire code kind of capacity,” Strang noted. “Very large facilities, like some of the large churches, like the large sports arenas, with an approved plan, they can have multiple groups of 150, but they have to have the space, and entrances and exits, and a number of washrooms, all that stuff.”
A limit of 60 participants applies to sports practices, games, and regular league play, the province said, noting tournaments are not allowed.
“They can practice, they can have their individual games, and their individual theatre performances, or dance performances,” said Strang. “Those are all okay.”
Children age 11 and younger continue to be restricted from entering Nova Scotia to participate in sports and from participating in them outside Nova Scotia, the province said.
The province announced updates to the restrictions on Dec. 15, including that spectators at sports games cannot eat or drink in the main seating area of the recreation facility, and must go to a designated area.