In a statement released by the Ontario government, it announced a province-wide shutdown starting from the weekend amid a surge in the spread of COVID-19 variants and ICU admissions on Thursday. 

Ontario is Canada’s most populous province. Doug Ford, Ontario Premier said at a news conference, “The new variants are far more dangerous than before. They spread faster and do more harm than the virus we were fighting last year,”

“This is a new pandemic. We’re fighting a new enemy,” he added. 

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On Thursday, Ontario officials also released a new model that depicts the alarming rate of increase in virus variants in spite of shutdown. It predicts that even with a shutdown, it may take weeks before the hospital admissions decrease and new daily cases fall. 

As per the Ontario scientific table, the third wave is “being driven by variants of concern,” because the new wave of COVID-19 constitutes of 70% cases of patients infected with variants. 

Talking about the increase, Dr Adalsteinn Brown said “It used to be that one family member, often a parent or grandparent, would be in intensive care while other family members would have caught a much milder form of the disease if at all,” CNN reported

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He added, “But with the new variants that are both more contagious and more dangerous, we’re seeing situations where whole families end up in intensive care, all at the same time,” 

Brown is the lead at Ontario’s science advisory table.

ICU admissions are expected to double within weeks as compared to their original pre-COVID records, reported CNN. 

Even though the new lockdown isn’t going to be a hard shutdown, all outdoor gathering, indoor and outdoor social gatherings are prohibited. Only up to five people can gather at once outdoors. 

All fitness and personal care facilities will be closed. Outdoor and indoor dining is prohibited as well.

Mails and retails shops to remain open at limited capacity. 

A 64% increase in new variant cases of COVID-19 has been detected in Canada as per Dr Theresa Tam. The most common being the B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in the UK. 

Public health professionals have expressed concern for Toronto and the adjacent suburb Peel which has been under lockdown since November 2020 and is still struggling with curbing the spread of the virus.