Mayor John Tory says he remains “deeply concerned” about rising COVID-19 case counts in Toronto and will continue to have discussions with the province through the weekend to explore what further possible measures might be required to curb the spread of the disease in the city.
“We're going to be sitting down with our own public health people and talking with the province over the course of the weekend to see what else we should be doing in light of the fact that the numbers are getting worse, not better,” Tory told CP24 in an interview Friday evening. “That means you have to do more, but it means people have to do more too with my famous mantra which is very simple and very short: stay home, please, please stay home.”
Tory’s comments came hours after Premier Doug Ford announced that the province is lowering the threshold at which a region moves into stricter levels of control within the tiered framework.
The shift by the province means that Halton, York and Hamilton will be bumped into the red zone, the second-strictest level, on Monday.
Peel Region is already in the red zone and plans were announced earlier this week for Toronto to move into the red zone on the weekend.
On 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Toronto will move into the red zone, which allows gyms to reopen and indoor dining to resume with no more than 10 people inside at one time.
But the city’s own medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, is also imposing an added set of restrictions above and beyond the province’s guidelines.
Using her power under the Health Protection and Promotion Act, de Villa suspended indoor dining in the city and banned indoor fitness classes until mid-December.
Toronto has logged nearly 3,000 new cases of COVID-19 over the past six days. The city is also dealing with outbreaks at dozens of settings, including one Scarborough long-term care home where 29 residents have died since the start of October.
Tory said earlier Friday that the city has done just about all that is within its power to do in terms of public health restrictions. He told CP24 that he would support “broader” public health restrictions in Toronto to help curtail surging COVID-19 cases in the city, but that it is up to the province to take further action.
Following Ford’s afternoon news conference, Tory told CP24 that he’s pleased to see that the premier is open to doing what is necessary to get the numbers under control.
“So now Premier Ford has said, and I commend him for his honesty in this regard, that everything is on the table,” Tory said.
On Thursday, Tory and de Villa urged Torontonians to take a core message to heart: that they should be limiting their interactions with people they don’t live with, including avoiding social gatherings.
“If people decided this weekend everybody was going to stay at home, everybody was going to, keep their distance, wear a mask and those things, we would be in much better shape,” Tory said Friday evening.
On Thursday the province released startling projections that indicate Ontario could see daily COVID-19 case counts of 6,500 by mid-December if further public health measures are not taken to slow the spread of the disease.
The new modelling also suggested that the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units in the province will exceed the 150 threshold within two weeks, forcing some hospitals to cancel elective surgeries and other procedures.
“I think it causes us all to pause, as it did in the spring, and say well then what more should we be doing in order to make sure that we can try to make these numbers better,” Tory told CP24 on Friday morning.
“If you said to me, would I be willing to be supportive of the premier, depending on the details, of broader actions… I have indicated that I will be supportive because I think that at the end of the day, when you see these kinds of projections, you have to act and the sooner you act the better.”
Ontario reported a record 1,575 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday and case counts increased in the province each day by an average of nearly six per cent in the previous three days.
“I do not believe there is a way the cases will change without action,” Dr. Adalsteinn (Steini) Brown, co-chair of Ontario's COVID-19 science table, said while releasing the modelling data on Thursday.
Tory said while he will stand behind additional restrictions, he believes it is important to keep schools open “for as long as we can.”
He added that theidea that has been “floating around” about extending the Christmas break for students is “worthy of consideration.”
