Niagara going to COVID-19 orange alert

New pandemic status impacts restaurants, bars and gyms for 28 days

Ashift by the provincial government to COVID-19 data thresholds more in line with public health and scientific advice means Niagara is moving into a more restrictive pandemic status come Monday morning.

Starting 12:01 a.m. Monday, the region will shift from its current status of yellow, or “protect”, to the orange “restrict,” level which imposes new limitations on restaurants, bars, sports and recreation facilities and meeting places. The region will stay in this zone for at least 28 days.

The new status is more restrictive than a recent Niagara public health order for bars and restaurants, which comes into effect Saturday morning, but does not supersede the local directives entirely.

Orange alert reduces the maximum occupancy at restaurants and bars, limits the number of people who can sit at a table, slashes operating hours and how long alcohol can be served.

It sets occupancy limits on gyms, and patrons can only stay for 90 minutes.

In both the cases of eateries and gyms, patrons have to be screened for COVID-19 when they arrive.

The new measures were announced by Ontario Premier Doug Ford Friday afternoon, the day after the Toronto Star revealed the provincial government had rejected Public

Health Ontario advice on the four COVID-19 control measure statuses.

“We must always be prepared to change course as the situation evolves,” said Ford during a Friday press briefing. “We are staring down the barrel of another lockdown.”

The provincial government moved the goalposts for regional pandemic metrics that would trigger the activation of a new level of restrictions, lowering key thresholds that will prompt those moves earlier.

On Thursday, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said Niagara was on the edge of moving up to orange alert and he was not surprised the reshuffling of the data thresholds caused a change for Niagara.

Hirji said while the move to orange alert imposes greater restrictions he was unwilling to impose because of the increased economic hardship they will cause, it remains an open question if it will be enough to tamp down Niagara’s COVID-19 infection.

“In larger municipalities that were already effectively in that stage (including Ottawa, Toronto and Peel) it did not have the effect of bringing those infection rates down,” Hirji said Friday.

The orange alert restrictions will largely work in concert with the measures ordered by Hirji on Friday.

Those measures require restaurants and bars to confirm with patrons they are dining with members of their immediate household or no more than one or two people who are an

“essential contact,” which includes caregivers or the partner of a someone who lives alone.

Hirji’s order required no more than six people at a table and did not speak to hours of operation or maximum total occupancy of an eatery.

Orange alert sets limits of four to a table, closing time at 10 p.m. and prohibits alcohol from being served after 9 p.m.