Top COVID-19 stories and news
Op-ed: Doug Ford’s COVID crash and burn
Canada’s COVID-19 travel restrictions: What you need to know
The updated list of Ontario lockdown restrictions
The full list of rules for Ontario’s stay-at-home order
Canada extends cruise ship ban to 2022
5 pm The federal government has banned cruise ships from entering Canadian waters for another year. On Thursday, Canada’s Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said he issued two interim orders to extend the prohibition of pleasure craft from entering Canadian Arctic waters and cruises vessels in all Canadian waters until February 28, 2022.
The ban, introduced at the beginning of the pandemic last March, was set to expire on February 28.
All pleasure craft will remain banned from entering Arctic waters and passenger vessels with more than 12 people are not allowed to enter Arctic coastal waters, which includes Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, and the Labrador coast.
The exception is local Arctic residents, who can use water vessels for essential transportation, subsistence fishing, harvesting, and hunting.
Additionally, cruise ships with over 100 people are not allowed to operate in Canadian waters during this time period. Smaller cruise ships with up to 100 people must follow local health authority protocols.
Read the full story via the Georgia Straight
Ontario allows pet groomers to reopen with restrictions
3 pm The province is allowing pet groomers to reopen from lockdown measures starting today in order to provide necessary services.
The government is amending the Reopening Ontario Act to allow groomers to provide “strictly necessary” services to prevent an animal from requiring foreseeable and reasonably imminent veterinary care. This also applies if the groomer is providing services that an animal owner has been required to obtain under Ontario’s animal welfare act.
Toronto police charge 14 people in gaming house bust
1 pm Fourteen people are facing charges under the under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act (EMCPA) for allegedly gathering in an illegal gaming house downtown, police said.
On January 29 just after 8 pm, officers went to an address near Dundas and Spadina following reports of a person with a gun.
Police say officers arrived, went into the basement and found 14 people inside, a large amount of cash and evidence of illegal gaming.
All 14 are facing criminal charges and EMCPA charges. They were all charged with being found in a betting or gambling house and are scheduled to appear in court on March 25.
On January 14, Ontario implemented a stay-at-home order and banned social or public gatherings of more than five people.
St. Lawrence Market launches home delivery service
10:45 am The St. Lawrence Market is going online. The city has teamed with online-ordering company Inabuggy to offer market shoppers the option to order groceries directly to their homes.
The service is available for people who live within five kilometres of the Market and the items will be delivered “in as little as one-hour,” the city said in a press release.
“Inabuggy’s personal shoppers will handpick and pack orders to ensure the quality and freshness of the St. Lawrence Market are delivered,” the city said.
Delivery is available Tuesday to Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm, and Saturday from 9 am to 4 pm throughout downtown Toronto.
The prices online are the same as in-store and customers can shop with no minimum order size at up to 10 vendors per order. There’s a pick, pack and delivery fee of $19.99 for the first five vendors, and an additional fee of $2.99 for each additional vendor.
The list of participating merchants is at inabuggy.com.
The city has deemed the Market essential retail during the most recent Ontario lockdown.
Ontario reports 1,563 new COVID-19 cases, 88 deaths
10:30 am Ontario confirmed another 1,563 new cases of COVID-19 and 88 more deaths on February 4.
The province saw 1,172 new cases on Wednesday, 745 on Tuesday (due to a data processing glitch) and 1,969 on Monday. The seven-day rolling average is down to 1,600.
“Locally, there are 584 new cases in Toronto, 265 in Peel and 132 in York Region,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said on Twitter.
The province completed 64,467 tests in the past 24 hours, marking a 2.4 per cent positivity rate.
Ontario has administered 355,055 vaccines as of February 4, including 6,724 in the past day. There are 80,977 people in the province who have been fully vaccinated so far.
There are 16,330 active cases in the province, down almost 500 from the day before. Hospitalizations jumped by almost 40 to 1,101, including 323 patients in intensive care and 241 on ventilators.
A total of 379 people have died in the past week, including 36 long-term care residents, one person between the ages of 20 and 39 and two people between the ages of 40 and 59 from the past 24 hours.
There are now 152 confirmed cases of the U.K. B117 variant, up 46 from the day before. There is still just one case of the South Africa variant.
To date, there have been 273,660 total COVID-19 cases in Ontario, including 250,937 resolved – up 1,956 from the day before. There have been 6,393 deaths.
26 people at Seaton House test positive for COVID-19
10 am Twenty clients and six staff at homeless shelter Seaton House have tested positive for COVID-19, the general manager of the city’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration Mary-Anne Bedard said on Wednesday.
Additional testing will take place today, she added. All the positive cases are now in the city’s hostel program so today’s testing will take place on other floors and other programs.
The city reduced the Seaton House capacity from over 500 to 200 people during the first wave of the pandemic.
The clients who tested positive have been moved to a recovery centre and the staff have gone home, she said.
The outbreak was declared on January 21. The shelter also experienced an outbreak last April.
“It’s not surprising to see an increase of outbreaks in the shelter system but that’s why we respond to them so aggressively because we want to make sure that we are maintaining as few infections as we can,” Bedard said.
New COVID-19 cases in Ontario on February 4
The following regions reported five or more new COVID-19 cases:
Toronto = 584
Peel = 265
York Region = 132
City of Hamilton = 78
Halton Region = 58
Niagara Region = 58
Simcoe Muskoka District = 55
Region of Waterloo = 51
Ottawa = 46
Durham Region = 34
Chatham-Kent = 24
Windsor-Essex County = 24
Middlesex-London = 21
Eastern Ontario = 20
Southwestern = 16
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph = 12
Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge = 12
Huron Perth = 11
Lambton = 10
Thunder Bay District = 10
Brant County = 7
Peterborough = 7
Algoma = 5
Porcupine = 5
