(Bloomberg) — Ontario said it will once again force restaurants to close, shift schools to online learning and order companies to work from home as the government tries to prevent Covid-19 from overwhelming the hospital system.
“We’re bracing for impact,” Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference Monday. “The math isn’t on our side.”
The measures are meant to slow a spike in cases similar to the one affecting many regions of the U.S. Canada’s most populous province has more than 1,200 people in the hospital with the virus, including 248 in intensive care, though the number of serious cases is still below the levels seen last May.
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Ford said the new restrictions are based on estimates that about one in 100 cases results in hospitalization. “We could see hundreds of thousands of cases — let’s be conservative, 100,000 cases or 200,000 cases. That’s a day,” Ford said. “That’s 1,000 people, 2,000 people showing up to hospitals. That’s not sustainable.”
As a result, his government will implement a new work-from-home order and impose stricter limits on indoor gatherings, including weddings and funerals. Gyms, theaters and many other indoor venues will have to close starting Jan. 5.
In addition, the province is delaying some non-urgent surgeries to prepare for what Ford called a “tsunami of new cases.”
“As we continue with our provincial vaccine booster efforts, we must look at every option to slow the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant,” Ford said in a statement Monday. He said the measures would be “time limited” and are tentatively scheduled to lift Jan. 26.
The shift to remote learning at schools begins Wednesday, when classes had been scheduled to resume after the Christmas holiday. Classes will stay online until at least Jan. 17.
“As cases continue to rise at a rapid rate and evidence on the omicron variant evolves, additional time-limited measures are needed to help limit transmission as Team Ontario continues to get booster doses into arms,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said in a statement. Ontario has now delivered more than 3.7 million booster shots.
Across Canada, provinces have attempted to blunt a wave of omicron infections. Quebec, the country’s second-largest province, has tried to curb infections with a curfew that began on New Year’s Eve. In British Columbia, bars and nightclubs were ordered to close and indoor gatherings “of any size” for events like weddings were prohibited. Alberta postponed the return to school after the holiday break.
(Adds quotes, Quebec case numbers, other provincial measures)
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