Premier Doug Ford announced on Thursday (April 1) that Ontario is applying a “province-wide emergency brake” as a result of an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations across the province.
“We’re facing a very, very serious situation,” Ford said during a media conference in Toronto. “As I’ve said many times, we will do whatever it takes to protect the people of Ontario. As Premier, it falls on me. I’m the one who has to make the tough decisions. Today, I need to make on of those tough decisions.”
The shutdown — which will last at least four weeks — takes effect at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, April 3rd.
“This is a new pandemic,” Ford said. “We are now fighting a new enemy. The new variants are far more dangerous than before. They spread faster, and they do more harm than the virus we were fighting last year.”
“We need to close the gap between where we are today and where we will be with the millions of vaccines we’re expecting by June. We need more time for our vaccine program to take hold. But we are in a desperate race right now against an extremely aggressive and fast-moving virus. We need more runway to allow our vaccine roll-out to get where we need it.”
Schools will remain open for in-person learning during the shutdown, as will child care settings, both with strict safety measures in place. Spring break will also continue as planned for the week of April 12th.
The announcement came hours after a technical media briefing by Ontario’s top health experts that shared a sobering assessment of the third wave of the pandemic in the province.
That assessment warned that COVID-19 is spreading far more quickly than it was before and “killing faster and younger”, with a higher propotion of younger people being admitted to hospital intensive care units, and recommended a four-week stay-at-home order to reduce the spread of infections.
However, the province-wide emergency brake announced on Thursday — which the province is not calling a “lockdown” — does not include a stay-at-home order.
The shutdown does include the following measures;
- Prohibiting indoor organized public events and social gatherings and limiting the capacity for outdoor organized public events or social gatherings to a five-person maximum, except for gatherings with members of the same household (the people you live with) or gatherings of members of one household and one other person from another household who lives alone.
- Restricting in-person shopping in all retail settings, including a 50 per cent capacity limit for supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, indoor farmers’ markets, other stores that primarily sell food and pharmacies, and 25 per cent for all other retail including big box stores, along with other public health and workplace safety measures.
- Prohibiting personal care services.
- Prohibiting indoor and outdoor dining. Restaurants, bars and other food or drink establishments will be permitted to operate by take-out, drive-through, and delivery only.
- Prohibiting the use of facilities for indoor or outdoor sports and recreational fitness (e.g., gyms) with very limited exceptions.
- Requiring day camps to close.
- Limiting capacity at weddings, funerals, and religious services, rites or ceremonies to 15 per cent occupancy per room indoors, and to the number of individuals that can maintain two metres of physical distance outdoors. This does not include social gatherings associated with these services such as receptions, which are not permitted indoors and are limited to five people outdoors.
The government says it will evaluate the impacts of the measures throughout the next four weeks to determine if it is safe to lift any restrictions or if they need to be extended.
While a stay-at-home order is not in effect during the shutdown, the province is asking all Ontarians to limit trips outside the home to necessities such as food, medication, medical appointments, supporting vulnerable community members, or exercising outdoors with members of their household.
The government is also asking employers in all industries to allow employees to work from home whenever possible.
The province’s colour-coded COVID-19 response framework will be paused for all of Ontario’s 34 public health units when the shutdown comes into effect.
