Announcement on COVID rules expected early this week

The most recent round of COVID restrictions are set to expire on Friday, but the health minister is expected to announce an update to restrictions early this week.

Minister Paul Merriman said he’s been discussing the situation with the province’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab, and they’re both seeing that numbers are trending in the wrong direction right now — up.

Speaking on Friday, Merriman said officials were going to continue to see what the numbers would do over the next little while.

“We want to make sure that we have that information, accurate information, up to date, to decide what we’re going to do over the next 14 to 28 days,” explained Merriman.

At the time Merriman was speaking, the seven-day new case average was around 250, which Merriman said was concerning but not unexpected.

“We anticipated that there was going to be a surge of cases after the holiday season and we have seen that and it’s come to fruition,” said Merriman.

Merriman wouldn’t speculate as to what might happen, but he did point out that other parts of the country have tightened their COVID restrictions even further.