As cases surge, province scraps social circles

New guidance draws swift criticism on social media

The social circle is gone, just in time for Thanksgiving.

With another 615 cases of COVID-19, Ontario’s rapid pace of infections has spelled an end to the concept in which residents were allowed to have a group of 10 people — including members of their own household — for close contact including hugs and without precautions.

“Right now we’ve got a wave to flatten,” chief medical officer Dr. David Williams told a news conference Monday, where he urged people not to have company for a turkey dinner this weekend.

“Given the current picture, we’re saying stick to your household,” added associate chief medical officer Dr. Barbara Yaffe. “The social circle at this point is not relevant.”

The new guidance drew swift criticism on social media, with Ontarians questioning why the province says it’s safe to sit at a restaurant table with six other people, but not safe to have a few guests for dinner.

The medical officers and Premier Doug Ford had been signalling the change for over a week, asking people to limit their close contacts, wear masks or physically distance with others, and imposing new restrictions such as shorter hours for bars and restaurants.

Social circles were allowed in mid-June amid warnings that cheating on them was a no-no.

Positive cases of COVID-19 are now yielding dozens — and in some cases, hundreds — of close contacts when the number shouldn’t be bigger than 10, Williams said, a clear violation of the social circle spirit that has fuelled the surge in cases since the end of August amid the return to school.

“People became fairly liberal on their application of the social circle and having many circles,” Williams noted.

The 615 new cases reported Monday marked the eighth straight day with more than 500 new infections and a level that is consistently higher than the first wave peak of the virus in late April.

It was an 8.7 per cent increase from the 566 cases revealed by the Ministry of Health the previous day as labs across the province continued to process a backlog of nasal swab samples, providing results on another 38,196 and leaving more than 46,000 people awaiting results.

Assessment centres were closed to walk-ins on Sunday. They will resume full operations Tuesday on an appointments-only basis, to allow labs to work away at the thousands of tests that piled up.

The snags left Ford’s government under fire again Monday after Toronto Public Health said the city has been so swamped with new cases that it is suspending contact tracing except for outbreaks, leaving individuals who test positive for COVID-19 to alert their own contacts about the need to selfisolate or get tested.

“They simply don’t have the resources to keep up,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in the legislature’s question period, accusing the Progressive Conservatives of “scrambling to catch up instead of getting out ahead.”

There will now be thousands more people awaiting tests because of the two-day pause in testing, she added, calling the situation “chaos.”