New Brunswick lifts all COVID-19 restrictions for 2nd time, hopes for different outcome

No more provincially mandated masks. No more limits on gatherings or distancing rules. No more legally required isolation for people infected with COVID-19.

New Brunswick lifted all remaining COVID-19 restrictions at 12:01 a.m. AT Monday with the end of the mandatory order, nearly two years after it began.

Premier Blaine Higgs declared a state of emergency on March 19, 2020, in response to the pandemic.

It was the first province-wide state of emergency in New Brunswick history and gave the government extraordinary powers, such as restricting travel into the province and ordering business closures, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The province had seven confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the time and four probable cases. No one had been hospitalized. And no one had died.

On Friday, New Brunswick recorded another COVID-related death, raising the pandemic death toll to 317.

There are 103 people in hospital, including three youths 19 or under, as of Friday.

Fourteen people required intensive care, and seven of them were on ventilators, according to the dashboard, which has now switched to weekly instead of daily and won't be updated until Tuesday.

Of those hospitalized, 49 were admitted for COVID-19, and 54 were initially admitted for something else when they tested positive for the coronavirus.

"With the vaccination uptake in the province, the ongoing management of our hospitals, and the commitment of New Brunswickers over the past two years, we are able to remove mandatory restrictions," Dr. Yves Léger, acting deputy chief medical officer of health, said in a statement Friday.

As the restrictions get lifted, "we will probably see some increases" in cases and hospitalizations "here and there," Dr. Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, has said. But based on modelling, they're not expected to be overwhelming.

"We are well equipped to move to the next phase of our pandemic journey."

CBC News requested the projections for cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths, but Department of Health spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane said only, "Our latest modelling predictions … indicate a steady decline in hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths from mid-February."

Asked whether the projections took into account the highly transmissible Omicron subvariant BA.2 now being in the province, Macfarlane said they took into account "variant specific characteristics," disease severity, vaccination rates, and population demographics.