As of Wednesday, Ontarians can no longer eat inside of a restaurant, go to a movie or workout at the gym.
Tightened public health measures aimed at slowing the rapid spread of COVID-19 went into effect as of 12:01 a.m. in Ontario.
Along with the closure of indoor dining, fitness facilities, and theatres, social gathering limits have been lowered to five people indoors and ten people outdoors. Capacity limits are down to 50 per cent for most personal care services and retail stores, including shopping malls.
Hospitals have paused all non-emergent and non-urgent surgeries and procedures in order to preserve critical care and human resource capacity. Patients with scheduled surgeries and procedures deemed non-urgent are being contacted by their health care team.
School-aged kids are back to learning online until at least January 17. Originally, students were to return to in-person learning on Wednesday.
The provincial government announced the return to a modified step two of Ontario’s reopening plan on Monday, giving residents and businesses two days to make arrangements before the stricter public health measures came into effect. The full list of restrictions can be found by clicking here.
Premier Ford said at the time that the province had to act because of a “tsunami” of new COVID-19 cases. He added that the Omicron variant, which is fueling the case surge, is “too contagious to stop completely” but that these are restrictions the province can enact to slow it while more people receive the vaccine and booster shots.
The restrictions are expected to remain in place for at least 21 days.
Ontario recorded a record high number of single-day COVID-19 cases on Saturday with 18,445 infections logged. The daily case count dropped to 11,352 on Tuesday, but that is largely due to a change to who is eligible to receive a publicly-funded COVID-19 test. The province currently only allows high-risk individuals who are symptomatic or are at risk of severe illness from the virus to get a free PCR test.
