Amid rising COVID-19 cases, the province of Ontario will not be phasing out vaccine certificates in some settings next month as originally planned, CityNews has confirmed.
In its reopening plan document released in October the province said in the “absence of concerning trends” it was scheduled to begin lifting vaccine certificate requirements at restaurants and bars, sports and recreational facilities and casinos and bingo halls on the January 17th.
CityNews has also learned that the province will adopt the QR code as the standard of vaccination proof in a bid to clamp down on certificate forgeries.
The Ford government is also not planning to close schools to in-person learning, even though COVID cases hit their highest mark yet in schools during the pandemic.
Premier Doug Ford is scheduled to meet with his cabinet at 10 a.m. on Friday, ahead of a planned update from the province’s Medical Officer of Health.
The news comes on the same day Ontario reported its highest daily COVID-19 case count in more than six months on Thursday, with new 1,290 cases.
Earlier this week, Ontario’s Science Advisory Table projected daily cases could spike to 3,000 per day by mid-January and even without taking the new Omicron variant into account, ICU occupancy will likely grow to 250-400 beds in January, putting hospitals under strain to keep up.
On Tuesday, Ontario announced it was extending its pause on lifting capacity limits in high-risk settings where proof of vaccination is required.
The settings where capacity limits will remain include, night clubs, wedding receptions in meeting/event spaces where there is dancing, strip clubs, and sex clubs and bathhouses. The province initially intended on removing the capacity limits on those settings on Nov. 15, but paused the gradual reopening on Nov. 10 "out of an abundance of caution."
On Monday, Health Minister Christine Elliott hinted that Ontario’s reopening plans must remain flexible in light of the surge in cases and new Omicron variant.
"We're planning to start lifting things but if this Omicron variant circulates widely, and if it's a virulent as it has been in other jurisdictions, we are going to need to take a look at that," she said.
With files from Michael Ranger of CityNews and The Canadian Press
