The soaring COVID-19 pandemic has led to further restrictions being imposed in Huron Perth.
Ontario Minister of Health Christine Elliott says our region, along with several others, is moving from Green-Prevent to Yellow-Protect with strengthened measures against COVID-19.
It comes as Ontario has significantly altered its COVID-19 coloured framework for reopening.
The new measures will see restrictions placed on when bars and restaurants are allowed to open and their music volume, as well as spacing between patrons at gyms, among others that were in place under the green level.
The move goes into effect as of 12:01 a.m. Monday.
Under Yellow – Protect there are additional requirements for the following:
- Restaurants, bars, and other food and drink establishments
- Sports and recreational fitness facilities
- Meeting and event spaces
- Retail
- Personal Care Services
- Casinos, bingo halls, and gaming establishments
- Cinemas
- Performing arts facilities
In addition to the provincial direction, Huron Perth Medical Officer of Health Dr. Miriam Klassen has issued additional recommendations for long-term care homes and retirement homes in Huron and Perth.
Dr. Klassen is recommending that homes put more restrictions onto visitors coming into the homes, and to cease permitting residents to leave the facility for “short-stay absences and temporary absences” except for those required for health care.
The directive comes as the outbreak at the Cedarcroft Place Retirement Residence in Stratford continues.
A sombre and oftentimes emotional Premier Doug Ford delivered the news on the enhanced restrictions Friday afternoon with several public health regions moving into more restrictive levels of Red Control and Orange Restrict especially in the southern part of the province. Seven other public health units across Ontario will be moved into the Yellow or Protect zone.
The province has altered the thresholds for the different tiers of the framework after a week of criticism from the medical community saying they were too loose.
In his briefing today Ford pleaded with Ontarian’s to follow public health advice saying “never has so much depended on our collective actions.” Ford said that yesterday’s projections of up to 6,500 new COVID-19 cases a day by mid-December has changed dramatically from when the province began putting its framework together and that we need to be flexible and be prepared to change course right before he delivered Friday’s news. He said that Thursday’s numbers could not have been more, clear that our hospitals will be overrun, “I can’t accept that and I won’t accept that.”
Here are the areas being moved into different levels of the framework:
- Red-Control:
- Hamilton Public Health Services
- Halton Region Public Health
- Toronto Public Health
- York Region Public Health
- Orange-Restrict:
- Brant County Health Unit
- Durham Region Health Department
- Eastern Ontario Health Unit
- Niagara Region Public Health
- Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health
- Region of Waterloo Public Health
- Yellow-Protect:
- Huron Perth Public Health
- Middlesex-London Health Unit
- Public Health Sudbury & Districts
- Southwestern Public Health
- Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit
- Windsor-Essex County Health Unit
- Haldimand-Norfolk
Southwestern Public Health
