Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, will ease its Covid-19 measures on November 14 and allow a number of businesses, including indoor dining and gymnasiums, to reopen in cities that have been hardest hit by the virus such as Toronto and Ottawa.
The easing by the government of Ontario Premier Doug Ford is part of a reopening framework unveiled and comes as Covid-19 case counts rise in the province. But recent modeling out of Ontario suggests the surge will not overwhelm hospital capacity as it did this past spring. Ontario prohibited indoor dining and closed fitness facilities on October 10 for a 28-day period.
Going forward, Ontario will use metrics including weekly case counts per 100,000 people, capacity of hospitals and contact tracing systems to evaluate whether to move a region in the province from one restriction stage to the next.
Several regions of Ontario, including the national capital of Ottawa, will ease restrictions on November 14, Ford said, as long as the province’s public health experts agree and approve. The new measures will limit but not ban the number of people permitted at indoor dining, fitness facilities, casinos and movie theaters.
Canada’s seven-day rolling average of new cases now exceeds 2,900, federal Chief Medical Officer Theresa Tam said at a news conference in Ottawa. Tam also recommended that people wear three-layer non-medical masks, with a middle filter layer, to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said people needed to act now to tamp down the spread of a second wave of Covid-19 before it gets out of hand.