The new order will go into effect on Thursday and will apply to Toronto and Ottawa. It is the second of its kind since the pandemic began.
“Last week I was here and I told you that our province is in crisis,” Doug Ford, Ontario’s prime minister, said during a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday. “The facts are clear: the cases and deaths are the highest since the beginning of the pandemic and the spread in the community continues to increase.”
For at least four weeks, the Ontario government “will require everyone to stay at home, with exceptions for essential purposes, such as going to the supermarket or pharmacy, accessing health services, exercising or essential work,” according to a statement provided to the CNN.
All non-essential retail stores and face-to-face dinners have been closed in Ontario since Christmas Day and in Toronto since late November. Schools at Ontario’s hot spots, including Toronto and its suburbs, will not resume face-to-face learning until at least February 10.
“We must change our mobility patterns, a lot of people are having a lot of contacts. The increase in contacts is the result of increased mobility,” said Christine Elliott, Ontario’s minister of health. “So to break this cycle, you must stay at home as long as possible and it starts with an order to stay at home.”
The authorities promised strict enforcement of the new restrictions and warned that people who violate the measures could be fined thousands of dollars and could face up to a year in prison.
Ontario ICUs are almost full
Canada’s second wave of Covid-19 is now more widespread and serious than the first, with a seven-day national average of 8,100 new cases per day, a pandemic peak, according to the Canadian Public Health Agency.
Ontario public health officials warned at a news conference on Tuesday that one in four ICUs in Ontario was already full and that the hospital system was under threat of being overburdened.
Ontario has reported 14 cases of new variants in the province, but officials said the most worrying is the discovery of three cases this week unrelated to travel, which may indicate that the variant is already in the community and spreading.
“In three of our cases we have no travel history,” said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, an associate chief medical officer in Ontario. “If this is confirmed, we have evidence of transmission in the community and this is a very serious concern that the vaccine will not be able to resolve quickly enough.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government is buying an additional 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, adding that Canada would have at least 80 million doses of the vaccine available by the fall. Canada is also administering the Modern vaccine.
Trudeau repeated his promise that all Canadians who wanted the vaccine would be vaccinated by September.
“We are doing everything we can to bring in more doses, to speed up the process,” Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday. “Because we know that the sooner we have as many vaccinated Canadians as possible, the sooner we will overcome this pandemic.”
CNN’s Elizabeth Hartfield contributed to this report.