The Canada Games Centre will close at 5:30 p.m. today until further notice, says the city’s manager of communications.

Myles Dolphin said this morning the closure was recommended by Dr. Brendan Hanley, the Yukon’s chief medical officer.

Game centre staff are currently working out a strategy to refund passes and address the cancellations of day camps for kids, he said.

While city council’s scheduled meeting for Monday will go ahead, Dolphin said, it will be closed to the public.

Anyone who was wishing to appear as a delegate is asked to forward their presentation to assistant city clerk Norma Felker, he said. Felker’s email address is norma.Felker@Whitehorse.ca

Dolphin said the presentations will be read out and put on the record by city staff, and the meeting will be telecast as usual.

All city buildings like city hall, the Municipal Services Building and the Public Safety Building will remain open but the city is asking that anyone showing signs of illness not attend city buildings, he said.

Dolphin said city transit buses are still in service and city staff have stepped up sanitizing efforts.

The Takhini Arena had already been closed for the season with the cancellation of the Arctic Winter Games scheduled for this week and the icing of the annual Yukon Native Hockey Tournament scheduled for March 27-29.

Mayor Dan Curtis has not been available to the media this week to discuss the crisis. Dolphin would not elaborate on the mayor’s whereabouts.

The city is asking residents to not dispose of hand wipes in toilets, as they do not break down like toilet paper but rather get bunched up in the pumps, said Geoff Quinsey, the city’s manager of water and waste.

Quinsey said department staff have to shut down and take apart the pumps to remove balls of wipes. Not only is it an unpleasant job, but it also means staff are having to take time to make repairs that are preventable, he said.

Quinsey said the same applies with paper towels, and women’s sanitary products.

Wipes, paper towels and sanitary products should be put in the garbage, he said.

Quinsey said they’ve not heard from the World Health Organization whether COVID-19 can be transmitted by used hand wipes and in the absence of any certainty either way, it must be assumed it can.

Minimizing staff’s exposure to the wipes is therefore of great importance because it’s a small staff to begin with and the city can’t afford to start losing any of them, he said.