Indo Canadian News News That Matters
Premier Doug Ford’s government has announced on Friday afternoon (Dec 18) that Toronto and Peel region will remain in the provincial lockdown category until January 4, 2021, at the time when situation will be re-evaluated
The province said that the city of Hamilton entered into the lockdown category starting Monday (Dec 21) after noting that the number of hospitalizations in the area has more than doubled in the past two weeks.
The existing lockdown restrictions in Toronto and Peel were scheduled to expire on December 21, 2020, but Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that these measures will be extended prior to commencing a meeting with provincial health officials.
“The trends that we are seeing throughout Ontario are very, very concerning and nothing is more important to our government than making sure we protect the health and safety of each and every person,” he said.
The Premier said that he will discuss the further lockdown measures at 01:00 pm on Monday. In addition, the province said it will also provide latest virus projections on Monday, The province said it will also provide updated virus projections on Monday, prior to Ford’s announcement.
The emergency meeting with Minister of Health Christine Elliott, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams and hospital leaders across the province aimed to discuss next moves to limit the worrisome trends in the province’s hospitals and cases.
Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, said while making the announcement that as the public health indicators continue to deteriorate across Toronto and Peel, the government is making difficult but necessary decisions to expand public health measures to stop the spread of the infection, protect the capacity of hospitals and safeguard the major services they rely on.
The move is not much of a surprise, as Premier Doug Ford had stated earlier that the city would not go out of the grey zone restrictions after its initial lockdown for 28 days. Despite the fact that the first COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Canada this week, it will take a lot of time before they reach enough people to control the virus.
In the almost four weeks since Toronto and Peel moved into the grey lockdown zone, the COVID-19 cases have continued to increase. Peel has seen its case rate rise by 8.6% to 199.1 cases per 100,000 people, while Toronto experienced a rise from 37.5% increase to 127.5 cases per 100,000 people. Since the lockdown took effect, Peel’s hospitalization rate has increased by 54% and Toronto’s hospitalization rate has increased by 40.9%, which has caused delays in operations and other procedures in several hospitals.
In Hamilton, the number of cases and hospitalization has also increased. The case rate rose 25.8%, reaching 103.3 cases per 100,000 people and number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 across the region has more than doubled over the past two weeks.
