Christine Elliott noted that Ontario has a highly vaccinated population now, has increased hospital capacity and has more access to antiviral medications to…
“At this point, it doesn’t appear necessary that we need to take any further precautions,” Christine Elliott said at a hospital funding announcement in Toronto on Thursday.
“If we need to take any further measure we will, but so far it doesn’t appear that we need to do that,” she said.Elliott also indicated the province likely won’t mandate masks widely again, despite recent advice from local medical officers in Ottawa and some other Ontario regions that people continue masking indoors in light of the ongoing risk from the virus.
There were 807 patients in hospital with the virus on Thursday, up from 778 a day earlier. The province reported 3,139 new virus cases, an increase of roughly 11 per cent from Wednesday’s 2,814. “I think the government’s trying to pretend like COVID is over and that we don’t need to do the things that we did in the last five waves,” he said.