Toronto’s mayor says the city will soon need to decide whether summer events, including the annual Pride Parade, can proceed with in-person celebrations later this year.

A spokesperson for the city told CP24 that all events up to March 31, 2021 have been cancelled, including the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Toronto.

“I will work with the organizers of the St. Patrick’s Day parade to make sure we do something virtual,” Tory said, adding that a decision has not yet been made on summer events.

Toronto continues to see high levels of community transmission of the novel coronavirus as hospitals scramble to deal with an influx in COVID-19 patients in intensive care units.

The pandemic forced the city move all of its major events to virtual platforms last year and the mayor noted that in the coming weeks, the city will start to have to make decisions about how events can proceed this summer.

“We are going to be making some decisions quite shortly on the events that go out through the spring because organizers have to plan these things, contracts have to be entered into, and bands have to be booked,” he said.

“We’ve taken no decision to cancel events into the spring, like Pride and Canada Day and so on, but that date is coming just because so much advance planning is involved that we have to sort of indicate whether we are going to issue permits and think that is viable probably in the next month.”