SUDBURY Greater Sudbury will move into the red-control COVID framework on Monday, the province announced Friday afternoon. The lockdown in North Bay/Parry Sound will also end Monday, when the area will also move into the red zone. And the Timiskaming Health Unit is moving to orange after a recent increase in cases. From the period of Feb. 23 to March 2, case rates in North Bay Parry Sound District have decreased by 84.6 per cent to 3.1 cases per 100,000 people and the number of hospitalizations has shrunk from 1 to 0, the province said in a news release. Greater Sudbury had been in the orange designation, but a recent surge in cases – including a record 32 new cases on Monday alone – prompted the move into the more restrictive designation.
Two COVID-19 cases added Friday by Health Unit mymuskokanow.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mymuskokanow.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“I’ll call it a small victory,” Bracebridge’s Mayor Graydon Smith says.
“My recommendation of a return to Red-Control is based on information that our overall incidence of COVID-19 has remained stable over the past two weeks despite the rise in the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant,” SMDHU’s Medical Officer of Health Doctor Charles Gardner said Friday in a letter to residents in Simcoe Muskoka.
As of Friday’s update from the Health, there are 217 cases of B.1.1.7 in its medical region. Dr. Gardner said that cases of variants of concerns stabilized over the past two weeks.
“I think it’s a recognition that hopeful things are getting better and that doing that restriction for a week maybe has helped that situation,” Mayor of Gravenhurst Paul Kelly says. He, along with many other residents and political officials in Muskoka, believes the move to lockdown Simcoe Muskoka wasn’t necessary. He adds that there were people outside of Muskoka that were against this as well.