TORONTO — Premier Doug Ford says Ontario health officials are in discussions about the second stage of the province's economic reopening plan, and he hopes to bring it forward over the next week.
Numbers of new cases have gone up and down in the two weeks since Ontario entered stage one, and the province has previously said it wants to see a consistent, two-to-four-week decline in new cases before reopening more.
Ford says even though Ontario extended its state of emergency Tuesday until June 30, it won't slow down the reopening process.
When asked specifically if restaurants may be able to open patios in stage two, Ford said it's one area he's looking at, and health officials will make those decisions within the week.
Ontario reported 338 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total in the province to 29,047 — an increase of 1.2 per cent over the previous day.
It includes 2,312 deaths — 19 over the previous day — and 22,811 cases that have been resolved.
The number of people in hospital dropped, though the amount of people in intensive care and on ventilators rose slightly.
Ontario completed 17,537 tests in the previous day, more than the 16,000 the province has pledged — but often failed — to do since the beginning of May, but still short of the government's goal of 20,000 a day.
The number of long-term care facilities experiencing active COVID-19 outbreaks dropped below 100 for the first time since the province started publicly reporting that figure in April.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2020.
The Canadian Press