With more and more things being shut down in an attempt for Reginans to stay indoors as much as possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the impact is already being felt on businesses.

Some in the Cornwall Centre are closing temporarily and on Monday night, the Capitol Restaurant announced it would be closing its doors permanently at the end of the week citing COVID-19 as one of the factors.

The Regina Chamber of Commerce recently conducted a survey on the economic impact being felt by businesses with 64% of respondents saying believe the virus will have a major impact on the profitability of business as compared to 14% who see it as a medium impact, 13% as a small impact and 6% who view it as having no impact.

“People are doing what they need to do in staying home and not going out, but that is having a lot of impact on business and we are concerned about that without a question.” Hopkins said.  “Hopefully it doesn’t go on for an extended period of time and things get back to usual in the near future, but we are quite concerned right now about what this is doing to the economy.

CEO John Hopkins says health and public safety needs to be the number one priority, but as a community we have to find a way to keep our economy from falling drastically.