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The Ontario government has officially announced that 27 regions will be moving out of the shutdown and into specific zones of the province s updated colour-coded framework next week, meaning all but four regions will no longer be under the stay-at-home order.
In a news release published Friday afternoon, the province said the majority of the public health regions will be moving back to the framework on Tuesday, Feb. 16, at 12:01 a.m. due to general improvement in trends of key indicators. The health and safety of Ontarians remains our number one priority. While we are cautiously and gradually transitioning some regions out of shutdown, with the risk of new variants this is not a reopening or a return to normal, said Health Minister Christine Elliott in the release.
TORONTO Public health officials in Ontario are taking further measures to trace a more contagious strain of COVID-19 that s been found in a number of regions since it was first detected in the Toronto area a month ago.
As of Monday, 38 cases of the new variant, which was first reported in the U.K. late last year, had been confirmed in the province.
The new variant is deemed to have caused a deadly outbreak at a long-term care home in Barrie, Ont., that has infected more than 200 people. The local public health unit was investigating whether it was a factor in another regional care home outbreak.
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TORONTO Ontario public health units announced plans to beef up COVID-19 infection control measures Monday with news that a contagious COVID-19 variant reported in the United Kingdom had emerged across the province.
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The United Kingdom variant has been deemed the cause of a deadly outbreak at a Barrie, Ont., long-term care home, and the local public health unit is currently investigating whether it played a role in another ongoing outbreak.
Now nearly a month after the first cases of the new strain were confirmed in Canada – in Ontario’s Durham Region – public health units in Toronto and the Kingston, Ont., have also reported confirmed cases of the variant.
Windsor-Essex and York Regions are moving into Lockdown and London-Middlesex is moving to red. Southwestern Public Health which includes Oxford County will stay in the Orange tier.