Ford has no plans to reimpose restrictions as cases rise in Ontario

Premier Doug Ford says that he is "confident" his government will not reimpose COVID-19 restrictions on the province. According to CP24, Epidemiologist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said Friday morning that Ontario appears to be "on the cusp of a spring wave" with wastewater surveillance data increasingly pointing to higher levels of virus spread in the community.

During a press conference in Ottawa, Ford repeatedly stated that Ontario has no plans to reimpose restrictions but is fully prepared to do so if the situation worsens. "Let's talk about that (imposing restrictions), if God forbid that ever happens, at that time. But we are prepared," he said.

When faced with criticism that he lifted restrictions too soon, Ford said, "everyone else in the whole country has taken their masks off" and that Ontario lifted its mandate after many other provinces.

Despite Ford's commitment to getting back to normal, Dr. Bogoch continues to sound the alarm bell on COVID. "We are seeing an uptick in the wastewater surveillance and, you know, it would come to no one's surprise if days or a week or so later, we're going to see perhaps a bump in the number of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 related illness," Bogoch told CP24 on Friday.

"I think it's fair to say that obviously the pandemic is not over. But it's also fair to say that a tonne of people, the vast majority of people five and up have been vaccinated with at least one and mostly with two doses and of course there is a growing number of people with three doses. We also can't ignore that a significant proportion of the province unfortunately was infected and recovered from an Omicron infection over the last three months as well."