Ontario to issue 4-week Stay-At-Home order starting Thursday

Media reports indicate the provincial government is poised to announce a provincewide stay at home order.

As well, Premier Doug Ford has announced mobile units will be deployed to areas that have been most hard hit to deliver vaccines to those in essential workplaces and to communities considered hotspots where people as young as 18 will be able to receive the vaccine.

CTV News Queen's Park reporter Colin D'Mello told AM800's The Morning Drive that the order will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday morning and last for four weeks.

"I think we made a massive move last week by basically shutting down the entire province, that was huge, shutting down thousands of businesses, that I hate doing but we are going to have further restrictions moving forward very quickly".

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Rising COVID-19 case counts and a greater prevalence of new variants of concern are behind the new restrictions, which also include an official stay-at-home order for all regions of the province and the cordoning off of aisles carrying non-essential goods in big box stores, which will be able to remain open to 25 capacity. Meanwhile, big-box stores would face new restrictions that limit them to only selling essential items. Ontario has seen just shy of 15,000 new cases over the past five days and record numbers of people being treated in ICUs, the highest levels since the start of the pandemic.

During his press conference today Premier Ford specifically pointed out Toronto, Peel and York as areas which could be facing the lockdown extension to a Stay-at-Home order.

SaultOnline/ONNtv will continue to provide more information as it becomes available and tune in to ONNtv as we broadcast this afternoon's update.