Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet met this afternoon and a new stay-at-home order was under active consideration at the meeting, multiple sources told CTV News Toronto.

The meeting comes in the wake of the medical officers of health for Toronto, Peel and Ottawa writing a joint letter to their provincial counterpart asking him to impose the order.

Premier Doug Ford also told reporters earlier on Tuesday that it is possible that he will announce further public health restrictions in addition to the provincewide “emergency brake” as soon as tomorrow, as cases continue to climb and hospital strain mounts.

“We're going to have further restrictions moving forward very, very quickly. And again, we have to focus on where we see the problem three regions, York, Peel and Toronto represents 60% of the COVID cases,” he said. “When you have an inferno going on somewhere, you have to turn the hoses there, you have to continue doing the whole province, but we're really focusing on the, on the hot areas,” he said.

He said he would discuss the new measures “tomorrow” but reiterated he very much regretted shutting down restaurants.

“I hate doing that, but we’re going to have further restrictions,” he said, declining to elaborate.

The province has documented nearly 15,000 new cases of COVID-19 over the past five days, and hospitals now have more COVID-19 patients in intensive care than at any other time during the pandemic.

Ontario's active caseload is only a few thousand cases below its January peak, and only a few hundred patients away from its maximum COVID-19 hospitalization burden.

Ford blamed the rapid spread in recent days on the variants of concern, saying they change the situation “day by day and even hour by hour.”

They now represent at least two thirds of case growth, but their path to dominance was predicted by the Ontario COVID-19 Science Table as early as mid-February.

Over the past few months, Ford was repeatedly advised of the increased transmissibility of the variants of concern as well as the likelihood they would lead to more dangerous health outcomes.

Epidemiologists advising the Ford government have at least twice publicly called for a two to four week stay-at-home order, something the Premier implemented in January but has not yet done for this third wave of infection.