Our area’s Medical Officer of Health would rather wait until June 14th before deciding on reopening the provincial economy.
This despite talk provincially of a potential early reopening.
“I would not recommend loosening restrictions before the 14th and then we’ll reassess at that time,” he says.
He says a number of factors need to be considered, including case numbers moving in the right direction and how the health care sector is coping with the new Delta Variant of Concern (VOC).
“If it starts to continue to increase significantly, in which there are some predictions that that is currently happening and may overtake the Alpha VOC, [which] we’re seeing this particularly in Peel… We have to be cautious about a loosening of restrictions,” he says.
On Thursday, the province reported fewer than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 for a fourth straight day.
“Provincially we have seen a drop in daily new cases below 1,000 and this is a really good sign,” says Shannon Mantha, Executive Director of Clinical Services and Chief Nursing Officer. “Locally we are also seeing a slow decrease in cases in the past seven days. We are definitely on the right track, but can’t let our guard down just yet.”
“We all need to continue to follow all public health measures and get vaccinated in order to be one step closer to getting back to all of the activities that we enjoyed prior to this pandemic starting,” she adds.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there were 12 new cases in the past week.