It’s good news, bad news kind of day for Ontario.
The good news is if all goes well, mask mandates in Ontario will no longer be a thing by the end of March.
In this week’s update Chief Medical Officer of Health, Doctor Keiran Moore reinforced Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliott’s plans for the mandate.
He says if the overall numbers and hospitalizations continue to fall, mask mandates could be removed by the end of this month.
However, he also confirmed that a new threat, the BA 2 COVID-19 variant is likely to become the dominant strain of the virus in the province by Mid-March because it is more transmissible.
Moore says the BA 2 variant appears to be almost 30 percent more transmissible than the currently dominant Omicron variant.