Ontario ‘staying the course’ on lifting COVID-19 mask mandate, health minister says

Christine Elliott made the remarks during a funding announcement at Ontario's North York General Hospital on Thursday. 

Ontario’s health minister said the provincial government is “staying the course” on it’s decision to life the mandatory masking mandate, despite experts saying the province is now experiencing the sixth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Christine Elliott made the remarks during a funding announcement at North York General Hospital on Thursday.

The minister was asked whether there have been talks about potentially reinstating the mandatory mask mandate which was lifted earlier this month.

“We’re staying the course, we don’t anticipate that we’ll need to move back to mandatory masking,” she said. “Except in certain locations where it is mandatory, most of it is discretionary.”

Elliott said people should be “patient” and “kind” with one another, noting that some may feel more comfortable to continue wearing a mask in public settings.

Elliott said the provincial government “knew that the numbers of COVID patients would go up” as the province lifted restrictions saying “there’s really no surprise here.”

She said Ontario’s top doctor Kieran Moore noted there would be a rise in cases on a “number of occasions.”

“But what we have now that we didn’t have before is a highly vaccinated population,” she said. “We also have antivirals and there are other tools that we have that we didn’t have before.”