The tentative lifting of coronavirus restrictions have been welcome indeed. How nice was it to sit outside a cafe and enjoy a coffee while remaining physically distant and COVID aware?
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Slowly, the limits on what we could do and where are being loosened and that means many businesses that have seen trade severely curtailed or even sent into hibernation will be reawakening.
With the necessary steps to keep us safe - such as limiting the number of customers in a premises at any one time, providing sanitiser, conducting card only transactions - all of us welcome the baby steps being taken towards some semblance of normality.
And we're looking forward to helping our local businesses get back on their feet.
Throughout the lockdown, we've provided a free register of businesses that have remained open and the steps they've taken to be safe places.
For the next month, we're encouraging businesses to update their details on our online story (which is free to access and read) so word gets out to customers that they're up and running and doing their bit to uphold the local economy.
We're also going to be hosting a weekly business hour on our Facebook page, each Wednesday starting at 6pm, offering businesses the chance to promote themselves in the comments. In effect, this will give them access to our large social media audience.
We encourage them to take part by posting a few words about the goods or services they provide (photos will help tell the story) and their opening hours.
The past few months have been tough but it is time, as the Prime Minister said, to come out from under the doona and get back to work and back to business - sensibly and safely.
As we've shown throughout the pandemic, we've made a great effort as a community to keep the infection numbers down. We have a long way to go, and the world will never be quite the same as it was, but we will get through the crisis.
We encourage all our readers to get behind the Back to Business campaign. If you can buy a product or service locally, do it. You will be helping the whole community get back on its feet.
Just as we helped each other out during the bushfire crisis, we can make a difference now.
After all, we are all in this together and together we'll come out the other side,