Mum’s the word on mall rules

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This article was published 03/02/2021 (1741 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a hot-potato riddle no one seems to want to answer: just how many people are allowed inside large shopping malls like CF Polo Park?

With neither the mall nor the province willing to reveal the actual numbers or how they were established, epidemiologists believe the situation could lead to rising COVID-19 case counts and “deadly” superspreader events.

The office of the fire commissioner, Winnipeg’s emergency department and executive staff from shopping centres like Cadillac Fairview — who would otherwise have those maximum-capacity limits handy — refused to provide any figures. They all deferred response to the province, stating that is something they have internally worked out with “official authorities.”

Asked repeatedly Tuesday, the Manitoba government then referred the Free Press to the very public-health orders that created the confusion, after bouncing inquiries through at least three different provincial portfolios. 

The province did not provide a definitive number for shopping centre capacity limits, but said it is “enforced by provincial officials” and that it must be a maximum of 25 per cent occupancy.

“We don’t lay out specifics for how retail stores and malls count customers given the vast array of differing infrastructure for each site; it is their responsibility to ensure they are compliant with capacity limits,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The province does not require them to report capacity limits publicly.”

So, exactly how many people can gather at Winnipeg’s largest mall, Polo Park, for example? 

General manager Peter Havens declined to answer. “We have introduced a range of tools and services including a capacity indicator available on our website where guests can access real-time capacity information at our centres,” he said.

That “capacity indicator” does not mention any numbers. According to Polo Park’s website, they use “Wi-Fi technology that detects the number of devices at our property in an anonymous and aggregated way” to indicate how busy the mall is.

While their capacity scale shows whether the shopping centre is “not too busy, moderately busy or busy” during open hours, none of those indicators show what the exact head count is. “We may restrict access and begin limiting entry into the mall,” states their busiest level on the scale.

In a Jan. 23 archived post to their website, the first day of reopenings under current public-health orders, Polo Park said each store will manage their own lineups, based on the capacity of individual stores. 

The archived post named 293 stores which are currently open — from Aeropostale to Apple; Banana Republic to Bed Bath & Beyond; and Sephora to Foot Locker. 

In a tweet on Jan. 30 responding to a customer worried about capacity limits, Polo Park’s official Twitter account claimed, “The 250 people capacity is for each individual store and rest assured we actively monitor the shopping centre’s capacity to comply with public health orders (sic). Your feedback is appreciated.”

If each of the 293 open stores at the mall could allow 250 customers at a time, as the tweet claims, that would mean 73,250 people are allowed at the 1,202,000-square-foot shopping centre.

 

“That doesn’t sound impossible, yes, but it’s definitely the reason why CF told us they’re not worried about how many people can come in,” said a worker at the Victoria’s Secret outlet, who asked not to be named because she feared possible termination. “And it’s why we have to figure head counts on our own.”

Speaking on background, a senior Cadillac Fairview source told the Free Press they’ve been “given the green light on at least 25,000 people.” The source refused to be named and insisted, “Please, trust us, it’s fair the way we’re doing it. I just wanted to explain that.”

Cynthia Carr, Winnipeg-based epidemiologist and founder of EPI research, is sounding the alarm about the devastating impact these discrepancies could have. 

“I get that economically we can’t possibly close businesses forever, but we’ve been consistently reacting to how cases increase behind the clock because of the incubation period,” she said. “And now there’s a deadly variant for this virus already in other provinces that we have to be realistic about.

“We don’t know that it has entered the province yet, but we don’t know that it hasn’t entered either,” added Carr. “It seems we’re playing fast and loose and could very well have someone here who has caught the variant and be asymptomatic enough to want to go to a mall.”

 

Twitter: @temurdur

Temur.Durrani@freepress.mb.ca