House parties more to blame than bars for rise in cases

Less than five per cent of Quebec’s recent new COVID -19 cases are related to bars, the province’s director of public health says.

The bigger problem: house parties, responsible for about 35 per cent of new cases, Horacio Arruda told a press conference in Rimouski on Friday.

A day earlier, Premier François Legault asked Arruda to investigate whether bars should be closed again. He made the request as cases rose, with about 45 linked to Montreal bars.

But Arruda said shuttering bars will not be necessary for now.

“When we look at the data that we have for bars ... it’s not necessarily the bars that are generators” of many new cases, he said.

Under Quebec rules, gatherings in homes, whether inside or outside, can have a maximum of 10 people, Arruda said.

But some young people are organizing parties that balloon in size as word spreads via social media about the gathering, he said. “Tracking down all those people isn’t easy,” since organizers might not know some of the people who show up.

After a flare-up of cases linked to a bar on the South Shore, the province last week tightened rules on drinking establishments — restricting the number of people allowed entry and barring the serving of drinks after midnight, for example.

Arruda credited those measures for a drop in cases linked to bars.

Inspectors who are checking on restaurants and bars are finding they are “making efforts” to apply provincial rules, he added.

Things “could change if we see outbreaks that we can’t control,” Arruda said. “We’re following it very closely,” and more measures could be brought in targeting bars if necessary.

He said Quebec will not hesitate to, for example, close individual bars, those in certain regions, or all drinking establishments across the province.

Legault, for his part, toned down his comments about bars on Friday. At a press conference in Baie-comeau, the premier noted that 97 of the 141 new cases reported on Friday are health workers. People who work in the health network are being tested monthly, he added.

The additional cases brought Quebec’s total to 57,142.

The number of new cases has been inching upward. In late June and early July, fewer than 100 were being reported daily. Over the past six days, the average per-day increase has been 122.

One new death was reported Friday, raising the death toll to 5,647.

The number of hospitalizations dropped by 17, leaving 260 in hospital. Among those hospitalized, 16 were in intensive care — four fewer than a day earlier.

A week ago, Quebec urged those who have been in Montreal bars recently to get screened. On Wednesday, the last day for which screening data is available, 14,952 people were tested, significantly more than in previous days.