A senior government source says the province will announce its plan for gradually loosening COVID-19 restrictions on Monday.
The source says according to the plan, regions with fewer cases — Hastings Prince Edward, Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington, Renfrew County and Timiskaming Health Unit — will begin reopening first.
They’ll move into the green zone of the province’s colour-coded framework starting Wednesday.
On the week of February 15th, all remaining regions except three hot spots in the Greater Toronto Area are scheduled to move to the framework based on their case rates.
For Southwestern Public Health, we might remain in the Orange-Restrict Zone, which we moved into near the end of November. However, as medical officer of health Dr. Joyce Lock advised earlier this week, we are right on the fence between the the Orange Zone and the Red-Control Zone.
The Southwestern Public Health region has 59.6 ongoing confirmed cases per 100,000 population as of today (Saturday), which would be high enough to trigger a possible move into the Red-Control Zone. There are other factors that need to be taken into consideration.
Toronto, Peel Region and York Region are expected to be the last to make that transition on the week of February 22nd, but the source says any spike in cases could cause the government to change its plans.
Further details on the restrictions in each of the coloured COVID-19 zones can be found here https://www.ontario.ca/page/covid-19-response-framework-keeping-ontario-safe-and-open#control
