Ontario gives police new powers to enforce stay-home order and ban on outdoor gatherings

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has extended the stay-at-home order by two weeks and has imposed further restrictions on outdoor activities and retail in the hopes of flattening the surge of COVID-19 cases in the province.

The announcement followed new COVID-19 modelling released by provincial science advisors on Friday, which showed that Ontario could top 20,000 causes a day if strong measures aren’t imposed.

“Our summer is at risk,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said.

Ontario’s science advisers recommended that a six-week stay-at-home order and a vaccination rate of at least 100,000 doses a day is the only way to curb the third wave.

Police enforcement of the stay-at-home order will also be enhanced, said Solicitor General Sylvia Jones. Police will have the authority to ask anyone who is outside what their address is and to ask why they’re out, she said.

Police will also be able to pull over vehicles to check that occupants are only out for essential purposes, she said. Those violating the order could be fined up to $ 750. The new authority, she said, will last for the duration of the stay-at-home order.

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Our summer is at risk

As of Saturday, outdoor gatherings will be limited to household members only, Ford said, in a twice-delayed media briefing late Friday afternoon. Households with only one member will be allowed to join with one other household. The province is also banning outdoor recreational amenities such as golf, tennis and soccer, and closing playgrounds.

“We, as a group, are not saying don’t take a walk around and get some exercise,” Ford said, but he added that there needed to be measures that target large groups of people who meet in public parks without social distancing.

“You go by the parks and it’s like business as usual, and I don’t understand it,” he said. “I’ve been up here sounding the alarm bells.”

You go by the parks and it’s like business as usual, and I don’t understand it

Big box retail capacity has been capped at 25 per cent. Weddings, funerals and places of worship will only be allowed to host no more than 10 people indoors.

All non-essential construction will also be shut down.

As of Monday, the province will also implement checkpoints at all interprovincial borders and limit border crossings to Manitoba and Quebec, with the exception of essential services such as goods, transit and medical care.

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Inspectors will also visit law offices, accounting firms, warehouses and other locations to ensure that only essential workers are present in the building.

“I’ve never shied away from telling you the brutal, honest truth,” Ford said. “We’re losing the battle between the variants and vaccines…. We’re on our heels.”

Several doctors and experts on Twitter have voiced concerns around the measures to increase policing, arguing that they could discriminate against low-income and racialized communities, which have already been hit hardest by the pandemic.

“Enhanced restrictions may be needed in Ontario, but we must be cautious of more policing,” tweeted Naheed Dosani, a palliative-care physician and faculty member at the University of Toronto.

“Low-income racialized people (many are essential workers) have a history of being over-policed. They’ve also been hardest hit by #COVID19. We can’t police our way out of this pandemic.”

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Elliott said that the province will focus 25 per cent of all future vaccine allocations on the 13 public health regions that historically suffered high rates of COVID-19-related deaths, hospitalizations and infections.

Around 700 to 1,000 beds will also be added to build hospital capacity, Ford said.

Sources on Thursday had hinted at the possibility of a province-wide curfew to clamp down on the third wave. However, cabinet ministers decided against imposing a curfew, with some saying that it could cause more harm than good.

Variants have accounted for 70 per cent of all recorded COVID-19 cases, said Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer.

According to the modelling report released Friday, there has been a 67 per cent growth in hospitalizations related to the pandemic as well as a 51 per cent growth in ICU occupancy.

Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, the province’s science advisory co-chair, said ICU occupancy from the second wave did not have enough time to empty out by the time the third wave hit. “We’re now filling up our intensive care units on top of what was still there following the second wave and this is one of the reasons that we are in such jeopardy,” he said during the briefing.

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Hospitals were “bursting at the seams” and care was already being compromised, Brown said.

The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table says high case rates will persist into the summer without stronger measures and more support for essential workers and high-risk communities.

The reality is there’s few options left

The group says vaccines are not reaching high-risk people fast enough to overcome serious illness seen in hospitals.

Brown noted that while the gap has narrowed, people at the lowest risk were still receiving more vaccines than those at the highest risk.

“That is a difference that needs to be closed,” Brown said, nothing that the province would see “a very, very big return” in the number of cases prevented if shots are allocated to high-risk communities.

According to the advisory group, 60 shots of a COVID-19 vaccine would prevent a single case when following an age-based immunization approach across the province. By comparison, just 35 vaccines would prevent a single case when following a vaccination strategy that prioritizes high-risk communities.

Ford said he sent out a call to other provinces on Friday, asking for them to send nurses and other health workers to Ontario, as hospitals buckle under the third wave.

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Despite the plea, the province turned down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s offer to send a Canadian Red Cross team to the province to aid the vaccine rollout in hospitals and long-term care homes.

“While we appreciate the prime minister’s offer, unless it is matched with an increase in supply, we do not need the Red Cross at this time for the administration of vaccines in Ontario,” a statement released on Friday by Ivana Yelich, Ford’s press secretary, reads. “We do not have a capacity issue, we have a supply issue.”

“The reality is there’s few options left,” Ford said, during Friday’s briefing. “We’ve implemented the strictest measures in all of North America, and the difficult truth is every public health measure we have left has a massive cost to people and their lives.”

Ontario has currently used 75 per cent of the over four million doses of vaccine it has received from the federal government so far.

Ontario reported another record in new daily COVID-19 infections on Friday. The province logged 4,812 new cases today, up from Thursday’s record of 4,736. It is also reporting 25 more deaths related to the virus.

The head of the Ontario Hospital Association said Friday the latest data from Critical Care Services Ontario show 684 COVID-19 patients in adult intensive care units, including 74 new admissions.

Elliott said 1,469 of the new cases are in Toronto, 851 are in Peel Region, 491 are in York Region, 366 are in Ottawa and 268 are in Durham Region.