Covid-19 Restrictions Extended In Halifax
HALIFAX—Covid-19 restrictions in the region around Halifax will remain in place for at least an extra week.
Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said today he’s extending business closures and gathering limits until at least Dec. 16.
On Nov. 24, with case numbers in the Halifax area exploding, the province announced new restrictions for businesses and gathering limits in the region.
Restaurants and other businesses that serve liquor were forced to close for in-person dining and tastings. Fitness facilities and casinos were also forced to close.
Meanwhile, stores, shopping malls, and other retail establishments had to further limit the number of people allowed inside them to 25 percent of their legal capacity.
Strang also asked people not to travel into or out of the areas where the restrictions were in place unless absolutely necessary.
At the time, Strang said the restrictions would initially stay in place for two weeks and that public health officials would assess the situation from there.
However, Strang said today the province has seen double-digit case numbers every day this week and that modelling projects that to continue for “several more days.”
“We need more time with the existing restrictions in place to see these numbers come down and be sure they’ll stay down,” Strang said.
Today, the province announced fifteen new Covid-19 cases, eleven of them in the central zone.
In total, the province has 117 active Covid-19 cases. Approximately 40 percent of those cases can’t be traced back to a specific contact and are considered community spread.
Right now, public health still has 1,178 open investigations, and the number of close contacts related to each case—an important factor in determining how severe the current outbreak is—remains high.
Strang has previously said that, even once it’s safe to relax restrictions, they won’t all be eliminated at the same time.
“I can’t make any promises about where we’ll be in three weeks, but what I can tell you is that the more we buckle down right now… the better position we’ll be to be able to have some slight relaxation as we enter the holiday weeks,” Strang said. “What we want to avoid is starting to lift things too early and then coming back and then in early January we have a significant resurgence of Covid-19.”
Strang also said that while the majority of Covid-19 cases in the province continue to show up in the central zone, more are starting to pop up in other areas of the province.
In part because of that, the province will expand its asymptomatic testing strategy beyond the HRM to the rest of the province.
Strang said the results of those tests will help public health officials decide how safe it is to relax the central zone restrictions.