Ontario reduces capacity to host sporting events

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

This new measure applies to stands, but not only.

The ad is not a return to square 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 permission to play in front of a full house early in the season.

Several National Hockey League teams have recently been affected by the outbreak in a major way. The Maple Leafs’ next home game, scheduled for Thursday, has also been postponed because their opponents, the Calgary Flames, have had 16 cases of COVID-19 during their training.

In a statement, the MLSE Group, which owns Maple Leafs and Raptors and others, said it supports the boycott’s move. He will provide answers to ticket holders for his squad’s upcoming matches In the next 24 hours, which is a good time for its ticket office staff to organize themselves.

Actions requested

This announcement also comes at a time when many doctors have been calling for the provincial government to act to limit the spread of the virus with the resurgence of cases and the presence of the Omicron variant.

This is it or we close it all, said Valerie Seals, an infectious disease specialist at Markham-Stuffville Hospital, referring to the potential limits of reception capacity.

There are much higher risks with this alternative. It is much more contagious than Delta, which was more contagious than its predecessor. So we’re in a new phase of the epidemic and I think it would be wise to reduce the capacity of the phases because we don’t know how it’s going to evolve, but we know it’s going to evolve very quickly.Dr. Michael Scholl indicated earlier today. The latter is the executive director of the Institute for Clinical Evaluation Sciences and an emergency physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.

The latter did not believe that it would be possible in the short term to use rapid tests to allow for full sporting events or concerts. There are a lot of people. It will be very difficult to control, He said.

Dr. Alan Simard, assistant professor of immunology at Northern Ontario College of Medicine, wrote in an email to Radio Canada that he would not place Never set sporting events, especially professional events, as a priority that overrides the health of our residents and essential services such as schools. Any indoor gathering, especially one with thousands of people, should be restricted before anything else..

In Quebec, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Services said on Tuesday that For now, the rules remain the same. So there is no limit to the number of spectators or the sections to be observed for shows, sporting events and cinemas with the vaccination passport already required at the entrance.