GUELPH POLITICAST #213 - Community Reporting on COVID-19

As of Tuesday night, there have been almost 200,000 worldwide cases of novel coronavirus and nearly 8,000 fatalities. In Canada, there are 424 confirmed cases, another 16 suspected cases, and so far only one death. The details are changing hourly, and all levels of government are scrambling to find the best way to respond. What we need right now is some community radio.

Open Sources Guelph co-host Scotty Hertz had the idea to use the reach of CFRU as a source of daily COVID-19 information for Guelph and area, and he's leaned on the local reporting and expertise of Guelph Politico for the first two editions of this emergency local news show. This week's podcast will feature clips from the show, which demonstrates the need for just such a program, and also demonstrates just how fast information is changing when it comes to COVID-19.

As you're listening to this week's show, be aware that some of the details have changed since they were recorded between 12 and 48 hours ago. It’s not that the information is incorrect, but rather it’s a matter of the cancellation of some services has become the cancellation of all services. For instance, it was announced that the City of Guelph is closing City Hall after we finished our Tuesday edition.

Along the way you're going to get some information about the ongoing reaction from the Federal and Provincial governments, and some of the economic and healthcare mitigation efforts they’ve been introducing. There are also as many local details as possible including what’s open, what’s definitely closed, and what services are out there for people looking for help and answers about COVID-19, and the prevention of its spread here in Guelph.

So let's recap the local, provincial and federal angles so far in responding to COVID-19 on this week's Guelph Politicast.

CFRU's emergency daily COVID-19 news show will be running every day in the late afternoon at either 4 or 5 pm depending on available timeslots. You can listen on 93.3 fm or cfru.ca. In the meantime, you can follow all the latest developments here at Guelph Politico.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.