Province announces new details ahead of COVID-19 restrictions lifting: Here's what Windsor-Essex can expect  

Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer attends a media briefing in Toronto on Monday, November 29, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Windsor-Essex residents will be able to have food and drinks at indoor sporting events and movie theatres and most businesses will no longer be required to contact trace, according to new details announced by the province ahead of Monday's reopening.

Ontario will move into the first step of the latest reopening plan on Monday, Jan. 31 which will see a return to indoor dining and establishments such as movie theatres and sporting arenas able to operate at 50 per cent capacity. As well, social gathering limits will be increased to 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors.

On Thursday, the province approved the following “clarifying and housekeeping amendments:

• Allowing food or drink services at indoor sporting events, concert venues, theatres and cinemas, bingo halls and other gaming establishments, horse racing tracks, car racing tracks and other similar venues. Individuals will be required to remain seated when consuming food or drink in these venues, limiting the number of close contacts while masks are removed. Masks will continue to be required when individuals are not eating or drinking.
• Removing the legal requirement to work from home except where necessary. The Chief Medical Officer of Health recommends that individuals who are able to work from home continue to do so, helping to limit mobility and reduce the number of daily contacts.
• Removing the requirement for most businesses to collect patron information for contact tracing. Public health units continue to have the ability to raise awareness of significant exposures warranting notification, such as through news releases.

“This is aligned with recent changes to the testing and case and contact management guidance and will allow businesses to focus their efforts on the enforcement of other public health measures in these settings, such as masking requirement,” officials said in a statement.

Windsor-Essex medical officer of health, Dr. Shanker Nesathurai says as the province moves toward reopening the impact that it has on the “metrics of burden of disease” should be monitored.

“The current level of disease activity is in part related to the level of public health restrictions that are currently formulated,” Dr. Nesathuri said. “And as we remove some of those public health measures it is likely we will have a higher burden of disease. Nevertheless, we should monitor if that burden of disease can be managed in the community, and if so I think it’s a reasonable approach.”

In addition to the amendments, the province announced hospitals will be able to resume previously paused services.

This will include non-urgent surgeries and procedures in pediatrics, diagnostic services, cancer screenings, some ambulatory clinics, private hospitals and independent health facilities.

Officials did warn that not all hospitals will be able to immediately resume these procedures and that “hospitals will need to meet certain criteria.” The province said that selection would be based on “local context and conditions.”

Windsor Regional Hospital officials say they are still awaiting details from the province.

- With files from CTV Toronto's Hannah Alberga and Katherine DeClerq