Limits of Covid In Canada: Canada has reported a record number of Covid cases in recent days.
Ottawa:
The Canadian province of Quebec on Thursday announced a nighttime curfew ahead of New Year’s Eve celebrations as Covid cases around the country soar.
Several provinces in recent days have introduced stricter gathering limits, while delaying the return of students to school after the Christmas holiday.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault said a 10pm to 5am curfew would begin on Friday and needed to slow the Covid-19 surge that was threatening to overwhelm local hospitals. He did not set an end date for the curfew.
“It’s an extreme measure of an extreme situation,” he said at a news conference, pointing to the recent doubling of hospital admissions and sick leave of medical staff.
Anyone violating the curfew could be fined up to 6,000 Can ($4,700).
Private parties in Quebec are also banned while restaurants and other venues are ordered to close.
Also on Thursday, Ontario limited concert and indoor sports venues to 50 percent capacity or 1,000 people, whichever is less, and allowed a fourth vaccination for those elderly in care homes.
British Columbia, meanwhile, has canceled all New Year’s Eve festivities, allowing only dining at restaurants but “no socializing or dancing”, according to a statement.
Quebec previously imposed a January-May curfew to slow the spread of Covid shortly after the Delta variant was discovered.
According to historians, a curfew of this scale has not been enacted in Canada since the outbreak of the Spanish flu a century ago.
Earlier this week, Quebec decided to allow health care workers with Covid but no symptoms to continue working, fearing that patient care would collapse if thousands of doctors and nurses were forced to leave. work for the virus.
Canada has reported a record number of Covid-19 infections in recent days, doubling from last week to more than 30,000 new infections on Thursday, led by the Omicron variant.
But public health officials have warned of underreporting because testing capacity is overwhelmed.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from the syndication feed.)
