I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d think the cheese slipped off the cracker with these people ... We’ve got a bunch of jokers out there.
Premier Doug Ford, furious about a Brampton house party with 200 guests.
A massive house party in Brampton by “a bunch of yahoos” on the weekend risks fuelling COVID-19 and setting back efforts to reopen more businesses in Peel Region with key decisions being made this week on moving to Stage 3, Premier Doug Ford says.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d think the cheese slipped off the cracker with these people,” Ford told reporters Monday, furious at the party and encouraging law enforcement officials to take a dim view of the 200-person affair that was broken up by police on Saturday night.
“The full extent of the law needs to be thrown at these people,” he added, citing two other parties that were far in excess of the 10 people allowed at public gatherings permitted in Stage 2.
“We’ve got a bunch of jokers out there.”
The organizer of the massive party was issued a fine of $880, but a justice of the peace will considering further action, with Ford urging a fine of $100,000 given the extensive arrangements made for the party.
“If you have the money to pay for security, you have the money for valet parking, you have the money to extend your fence … guess what? You have the $100,000 fine.”
Ford said police should have ticketed everyone at the party and suggested stronger enforcement measures are needed to keep a lid on such activities.
Decisions on moving Peel, Toronto and Windsor-Essex to wider Stage 3 reopenings enjoyed in the rest of the province were postponed until Wednesday while health authorities take an extra couple of days to consider the number of new cases.
Stage 3 includes allowing bars and restaurants to serve patrons indoors, as well as allowing gyms and movie theatres to open.
With the province down to 119 new cases Monday, Health Minister Christine Elliott said the Brampton party has thrown a wrench into the decisionmaking process because anyone infected probably won’t show symptoms by Tuesday night when public health officials will make the call.
“When something like this happens, it sets everything back,” she warned.
The 119 new cases were down from levels over the weekend as the province passed a milestone by reaching the two million mark in testing for the highly infectious virus that arrived in late January.
The number of new infections follows 137 new cases reported Sunday,138 on Saturday and195 on Friday.
Elliott said people under age 40 continue to be the majority of new cases, with 76 people in that age category on Monday. Public health authorities have repeatedly warned recently that young adults are not taking enough precautions to protect themselves.
Older adults are also using poor judgment, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate medical officer of health, said. “We’ve had people in their 50s who had private parties at their cottage, for example, even while they were symptomatic.”
The largest number of active cases of COVID-19 is in people in their 20s, with 407 infections, compared with 283 people in their 30s and 227 under the age of 19.
“Locally, 30 of the province’s 34 public health units are reporting five or fewer cases, with 16 of them reporting no new cases,” Elliott said.
The hot spots for new infections remain Windsor-Essex, where outbreaks among farm workers have proven a recurring problem, with 40, and Ottawa with 28, according to Ministry of Health figures as of reports from health units at 4 p.m. Sunday. With the farm outbreaks mostly in the Kingsville and Leamington areas south of Windsor on the shores of Lake Erie, Yaffe said “one of the options” is leaving the two towns in Stage 2 while the rest of Essex County moves ahead to stage three. More on-farm testing will resume this week.
For the under-40 set, 59 new cases were in the 20-39 age group and 17 were under 19. Another 31 people in the 40-59 age category caught the virus along with 12 ages 60 to 79.
The Ministry of Health reported one more death and 10 more cases of COVID-19 in workers at nursing homes, where eight staff and almost 1,800 residents have died after the virus spread like wildfire through the close confines starting in April.