Ontario reducing potential for sporting events

Doug Ford’s government has indicated that indoor spaces accommodating more than 1,000 people will be limited to 50% of their capacity from Saturday.

This new measure applies to the amphitheater, but not only.

The announcement is not a return to class one for Ontario’s professional sports teams.

The latter played their matches behind closed doors last year. They performed in front of 10,000 people during the preparatory calendar before receiving authorization to play in front of a full house at the start of the season.

Several National Hockey League teams have been hit by major outbreaks recently. The Maple Leafs’ next home game, scheduled for Thursday, has also been postponed because of 16 cases of COVID-19 within the formation of their opponents, the Calgary Flames.

In a statement, MLSE Group, which owns the Maple Leafs and Raptors, said it supports the province’s decision. He will answer the ticket holders for the upcoming matches of his teams in the next 24 hours, the time when its workforce is organized at the ticket office.

measures requested

The announcement comes at a time when many doctors were asking the provincial government to act to limit the spread of the virus with the resurgence of cases and the appearance of the Omicron variant.

That’s where we stop everything, said Valerie Sales, infectious disease specialist at Markham-Stoffville Hospital, in reference to the potential limits of reception capacity.

There is a lot of risk with this type. It is much more contagious than Delta, which was more contagious than the previous one. So we are in a new phase of the pandemic and I think it would be prudent to reduce the capacity of stadiums because we don’t know how it will develop but we know it will develop very quickly, outlined Dr. Michael Schul earlier in the day. He is CEO of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and an emergency physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.

The latter did not believe that in the short term it was possible that rapid tests could be used to allow sporting events or concerts to be held with a full house. there are too many people. will be very difficult to control, They said.

Dr. Ellen Simard, associate professor of immunology at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, wrote in an email to Radio-Canada that she would not Never put sporting events, especially professional ones, in priority beyond our essential services like the health of our population and schools. Any indoor gathering, especially one involving thousands of people, must face sanctions before anything else.,

In Quebec, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Services indicated on Tuesday that For now, the rules are the same, There is therefore no limit to the number of spectators or classes for respect of shows, sporting events and cinemas with the required vaccination passport already in place at the entrance.