TORONTO – Ontario’s chief medical officer of health says he wants stay-at-home measures to remain in place until the province dips below 1,000 daily COVID-19 cases.
Dr. David Williams made the pronouncement on Monday, hours after the province announced 2,716 new cases and a rolling seven-day average of more than 3,000 cases.
“I think it has to be well below 1,000 with the variants,” Williams said at a Queen’s Park media briefing.
“With the variants, it’s a new issue. They’re much more readily transmitted, so we have to be a lot more cautious.”
Ontario’s state of emergency was initially put in place in early April and was initially set to expire in early May, but Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet extended it through May 20 and are now believed to be considering extending it once again, into June.
Williams said once the province gets to 70 per cent vaccinated with their first dose, he believes a daily case range between 500 and 600 people is doable. As of Monday, Ontario has vaccinated about 42.8 per cent of its population with at least one dose.
“We’d like to do that so that, if we’re coming back down, we’re staying down,” he said. “We don’t want to go back up again. We do not want a fourth wave. We don’t want to close things back down again when we open up.”
Under Ontario’s current stay-at-home orders, non-essential businesses are reduced to curbside service only, while essential stores must cordon off non-essential items and not offer them for in-person sales.
Restaurants can only operate for take-out and delivery, personal care services must remain closed and many outdoor recreational activities, including golf and tennis, are closed. Schools are also off limits for students and teachers, with remote learning in place across the province.
Thunder Bay is one of the least affected areas in the province, one of just seven public health units to report single digit cases to the province on both May 8 and May 9, the latest published report.
Williams also said he’d like to see intensive care unit numbers tumble before reopening is considered, somewhere in the 200 range. There were more than 800 in Ontario ICUs on Monday.
Health Minister Christine Elliott did not say if the province was going to extend the order, but did say the province has to stay the course.
“Well, we're looking at things daily but what I do know is that we're going to have to see our numbers go down. They're under 3,000 today, which is encouraging, and the numbers in intensive care are at 828. But that's still very high, and we need to see them go down more before we can change the stay-at-home order. The medical experts have been very clear that we need to stay the course.”
The province has not said if it thinks a regional reopening and a return to the colour-coded framework is in the cards moving forward.
