Cases back above 100
Ontario has seen a slight uptick in new cases to 115 announced Monday, breaking a one-week streak of fewer than 100 new cases of COVID-19 per day.
But there was some good news — there were no new deaths announced and there are now under 1,000 active cases in the province.
Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said he's not surprised by the uptick, which he said is tied to the flow of test results from the labs, and he's hoping and planning for the number of cases to drop again — perhaps to a level of 50 per day.
However, he said the numbers will fluctuate in different communities as outbreaks continue to occur.
School reopening plan slammed
Ontario's opposition parties piled on the Ford government's plan for reopening schools, with the NDP dubbing it a "risky scheme" and the Liberals urging the premier to consider delaying the start of the school year until the reopening can be done right.
At a press conference in Ottawa, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath praised the "superhuman" parents who have been home-schooling their kids while working from home. She joined the calls for the province to facilitate smaller class sizes, saying that if she were premier she would be busy hiring additional teachers and scouting extra spaces for classes to be held.
Horwath said parents are telling her they want to see their kids back in school five days a week, safely. "But what we have instead is a premier who's determined to stick with a scheme that's a bargain-basement scheme that really pinches pennies on the backs of our kids. And it's making parents extremely, extremely worried."
Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca wrote a letter to Ford, urging him to create an "Education Command Table" that includes experts, unions and the opposition, to oversee the reopening of schools, to order that funding be provided to allow class sizes to be capped at 15 students and, if necessary, to delay the reopening of schools long enough to implement that plan.
"Now is not the time to roll the dice and simply hope that our school reopening will go smoothly. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment and I have immense confidence in the people of Ontario to rise to the occasion on behalf of our kids," he wrote. "I stand ready to assist you in any way that I can on this matter."
At his daily press conference, Ford was asked how confident he was that children won't get COVID-19 at school.
"Well, I'm confident, but to say I'm confident no one's gonna catch the virus — it's just not realistic with 2 million people going back into the system, 160,000 teachers," he said.
"I do believe we have the best plan in the entire country," he continued and said that some people in other provinces have been calling on their governments to follow Ontario's lead.
Ford also suggested there would be problems with implementing smaller class sizes. "I'm not going to be putting kids in strip malls or industrial buildings, that's for sure," he said. "And then, the other issue are the teachers."
Windsor-Essex enters stage three
Windsor-Essex will join the rest of the province in stage three of the economic reopening plan on Wednesday at 12:01 a.m., Ford announced Monday.
"I'm so happy for them, I really am," said the premier at his daily press conference, adding he will be going to the region on Thursday.
Stage three means bars and restaurants can open inside, with restrictions, playgrounds can open and gathering limits are increased to a maximum of 50 people indoors and a maximum of 100 people outdoors, with physical distancing in place.
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