Ontario issues stay-at-home order, closes most stores as COVID cases rise

(Reuters) -Ontario will begin a four week-long stay-at-home order and close in-store shopping for non-essential retailers as of Thursday, Premier Doug Ford said on Wednesday, as the Canadian province battles a surge of COVID-19 cases.

“The situation is extremely serious. We need to hunker down right now,” Ford said at a briefing in Toronto.

“What we do until we start achieving mass immunization will be the difference between life and death for thousands of people.”

The order requires people in Canada’s most populous province to stay in their residences except for essential reasons, including exercise, vaccination appointments or grocery trips.

Last week, Ontario shuttered all indoor and outdoor dining, a move that fell short of what the government’s expert advisory panel said was necessary to avoid catastrophically high case numbers.

All retailers except those selling grocery, pharmacy and gardening goods will close for four weeks, except for curbside pickup. Big box stores can remain open, but with capacity limits and only certain products including groceries, pharmacy and gardening materials available for in-store purchase.

Industry groups had criticized Ford for allowing big box stores to remain open during past lockdowns while shutting small businesses.

Retailers considered essential can open for in-store shopping by appointment only. These include medical device supply and repair shops, optical stores and auto mechanics.

On Tuesday, Canada reported 6,520 cases, the most recent data publicly available. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned of a “very serious” third wave of the virus, with more young people going into hospital and on ventilators due to more lethal variants.

Hospitals in Ontario are becoming more stretched. Provincial data showed more COVID-19 patients in intensive care units than at any point since the pandemic began.

ICU admissions are rising faster than the worst-case scenario modelled by experts, Ford said.

The province also announced that all teachers and education staff in Toronto and the suburb of Peel would be eligible for vaccination beginning during the school districts’ April break.

On Tuesday Toronto Public Health shuttered the city’s schools for in-person learning, sending the country’s largest school district of around 247,000 students back to remote learning from Wednesday until April 18.

Hours earlier Ford had told reporters that schools were safe and closures would be unnecessary.

Ontario reported 3,215 new cases on Wednesday, according to government data.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)

Canada’s biggest provinces seek clamp down on social gatherings as coronavirus wave spreads

By Mahad Arale and Allison Lampert

TORONTO/MONTREAL (Reuters) – Canada’s two most populous provinces on Friday moved to clamp down further on social gatherings in a bid to slow a second wave of coronavirus cases sweeping across much of the country.

Ontario ordered the closure of bars and restaurants from midnight to 5 a.m. except for takeout and delivery and said strip clubs would have to shut down from Saturday.

Premier Doug Ford, whose government has already slashed the size of permitted gatherings indoor and outdoors, repeated his concerns that the majority of new cases were in people under 40.

“I can tell you I don’t see seniors going into nightclubs too often,” he told a daily briefing.

Health officials in Canada have been making increasingly gloomy comments in recent days. Theresa Tam, the chief medical officer, said on Friday that some local authorities could be overwhelmed unless the wave was curbed.

In Quebec, Health Minister Christian Dube urged residents to cut down on social interactions.

“We’re asking you to make a special effort for the next 28 days,” he told a news conference, saying the government did not want to close bars because people might then attend private parties that are harder to control.

Ontario and Quebec together account for 79% of the 149,094 cases reported in Canada so far and 93% of the 9,249 deaths.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada signed a deal with AstraZeneca PLC to buy up to 20 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. It is among the leading candidates in the global race for a vaccine.

Procurement Minister Anita Anand said in an interview that the first doses were due in early 2021, assuming public trials went well.

Canada has now signed deals for a total of around 300 million doses of vaccine candidates from a number of major pharmaceutical firms.

(Additional reporting by Allison Martell in Montreal, writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Alistair Bell)