Ontario's Stage 3 COVID-19 stability due to Ontarians' strict adherence to local bylaws

#OntarioStage3; #Covid19Cases; #StrictAdherenceToBylaws

Ottawa, Aug 28 (Canadian-Media): Absence of spike in COVID-19 cases even four weeks after when Toronto and Peel Region joined the rest of Ontario (with the exception of Windsor-Essex) in Stage 3 of the province's pandemic reopening plan has been attributed to Ontarians' strict adherence of public health advice, media reports said.

Doug Ford. Image credit: Twitter handle

Fears of a resurgence in COVID-19 cases in Ontario after bars and other indoor spaces were reopened have not emerged even with  four weeks of looser restrictions in which 97 percent of Ontario's population has been living, reportedly enough time for trends in new coronavirus infections to emerge. 

The increase in the provincial average number of daily new cases has been very slight since early August which recorded the lowest point in its trendline in months.

Asked by reporters his assessment of Ontario's performance in Stage 3, Premier Doug Ford credited local medical officers of health. "Everyone's moving forward, they're doing a great job," Ford said Thursday in Brockville, Ont., during his daily news briefing. "I really have confidence in our public health system."

Ontario had maintained its "curve" to be below 110 throughout August, which meant that the daily average of cases is actually lower than in July, when bars and restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area were still not allowed to serve customers indoors.

"The province is actually doing much better than I would have expected as we moved into Stage 3," said Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health,  in an interview with CBC News.

Relatively successful Ontario's Stage 3 reopening has been attributed by Ontario's Health experts to a range of factors, including physical distancing, adherence to local bylaws requiring masks in shops and on transit; limiting occupants on indoor businesses; majority of the population's general adherence to public health advice, and summer weather during which people could spend time outdoors, where the risk of transmission is at its lowest.