Peel’s top public health official says that he is unlikely to recommend the extension of local mask mandates after they expire at the end of the month so long as the current trends remain the same.
Premier Doug Ford has already said that Ontario is “not far away” from scrapping a provincewide mask mandate that has been in effect since July, 2020 with an announcement expected in “the coming weeks.”
But most municipalities also have separate bylaws in place requiring that masks be worn in indoor public settings, complicating efforts to lift the requirement across the province simultaneously.
During a briefing at Brampton City Hall on Wednesday morning, Peel Region’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Lawrence Loh said that while masks are “warranted” during times of higher transmission he would be unlikely to recommend that the local mandates be extended after their expiry at the end of March, given the reduction in hospitalizations and case counts.
“At this point in time our trends here in Peel reflect those elsewhere in Ontario. So I can share that here in Peel if our trends were to remain the same at the time that the local masking bylaws are up for review at the end of March I would likely not recommend the extension of them, however we do need to continue to watch the trends carefully,” he said.
Mississauga and Brampton each put into place mandatory mask bylaws in the early days of the pandemic and have since extended those bylaws on multiple occasions.
However, with public health indicators quickly improving the province has embarked on an aggressive plan to lift virtually all remaining public health restrictions.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore has said that the mask mandate could remain in place in some high-risk settings, such as hospitals, long-term care homes and public transit, but he has acknowledged that it will likely be lifted “simultaneously” in most other settings, including schools.
“I want to see kids get back to normal and for those who are criticizing this pending provincial decision, I would say there was also a lot of criticism when kids were going back to school,” Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said during Wednesday’s briefing. “I was out there along with other big city mayors pushing to get kids back in school learning, I really felt it was important and the critics were saying there would be huge hospitalizations. Well that never materialized. So I do think it is important we get back to normal as a society.”
A number of other provinces have already announced plans to lift mask mandates, including Alberta where the government has announced plans to enact legislation that would prohibit municipalities from introducing their own mandates.
Toronto’s mask bylaw is expected to be reviewed by city council during an April meeting.
During a subsequent briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Elieen de Villa suggested the mask bylaw will be evaluated but refused to say whether she plans to recommend scrapping it should conditions stay the same, as Loh did.
“What I am going to say is that we are actively looking at the situation, we see good science and we have lots of reasons for optimism tempered with some degree of caution. So we're continuing to monitor the situation and we're in active conversation with our partners because we knew that these measures, many of the measures that have been put into place, were really about what was needed at the time,” she said. “The notion is to draw them back as appropriate in a gradual fashion consistent with what we see on the ground.”
