OTTAWA -- Easter dinner is cancelled. That’s the message from Premier Doug Ford.
“I’m asking you don’t make plans for Easter. That’s what I can tell you,” Ford said at a press conference Tuesday.
In the midst of a third wave that’s ravaging Ontario and setting new records for daily increases in ICU patients, Ford is warning more restrictions could be coming.
“I won’t hesitate to lock things down if we have to. I did it before I’ll do it again,” Ford said.
A move to the Grey Zone would mean an end to indoor dining; patio seating would be reserved for members of the same household.
“What’s going to happen is the same old story. Layoffs again to our employees,” Danny Nayel, owner of Broadway in Barrhaven, said.
He says for restaurants like his, with limited space for patios, increased restrictions would be devastating to staff.
“It sucks, it really sucks. Some of them, it’s their livelihood, and it’s just brutal. I’m speechless,” Nayel said.
Along with changes to restaurants, the next level of provincial restrictions would mean fitness facilities and salons would be forced to close.
Retail stores would be limited to 25 per cent capacity, and grocery stores would drop to 50 per cent capacity.
“It’s definitely taking a huge toll on my personal income and on the business income,” Sidd Dulal, a partner at BlackMarket Barbershop said.
Dulal opened the salon recently, but trying to build a customer base in between shutdowns has been challenging.
“We’ve poured a lot of money into the business and breaking even is going to take longer than expected. We’ve been open for a year and it’s definitely a tough situation to be in”
In Ottawa, the city set a record Tuesday with its sixth straight day of more than 100 new COVID-19 cases.
At five per cent, the test positivity rate is as high as it’s been in a year.
“It is a bad situation. The [reproduction number] is about 1.23 which is really, really high, that is well into exponential growth,” epidemiologist Dr. Raywat Deonandan said.
“We can’t vaccinate ahead of this anymore.”
It comes as doctors are warning about the potential for record hospitalizations in the capital region. Currently the acute bed capacity is at 95 per cent.
“The third wave was originally characterized between a race between vaccinations and variants and the variants have won. Now it’s a race between variants and ICU bed capacity,” Deonandan said.
Deonandan says the way to stabilize hospitalizations is through more restrictions; something he says should have already been implemented.
“We are seeing exponential growth already. 1.23 as a reproduction number is extraordinarily high, we’re probably going to reach soon higher peaks that we saw during the second wave,” Deonandan said.
For small business owners, it’s a crushing blow to any sense of optimism warmer weather was bringing.
“We were optimistic at that time and right now with what we’re looking at, you know, I’m a positive person but my optimism as to a positive summer 2021 is waning a little bit,” small business owner Michael Wood said.
“Small business had the most amount to lose and they took the most amount of precautions and in many ways they’ve been hit the hardest by these potential closures that are coming,” he added.
In a statement, Ottawa Public Health could not confirm whether the city was moving imminently towards the Grey zone. They tell CTV News they’re monitoring “numerous indicators and COVID-19 metrics in order to make recommendations to the province.”
