Omicron, high daily cases should not affect plans to ease rules for holidays: Legault – Toronto Star

MONTREAL – Quebecers shouldn’t expect to change their Christmas and New Year’s plans, despite the high number of new daily COVID-19 infections in the province, Premier François Legault said Monday.

Limits on indoor private gatherings will increase from 10 to 20 people starting Dec. 23 — even though cases of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus are likely to jump in Quebec like they have in Ontario, Legault added.

“There’s no reason — for the moment — to think that this variant is more dangerous than Delta or the other variants,” Legault told reporters in Montreal, referring to the Omicron mutation.

The government, he said, is focusing not on daily cases but on the number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations in Quebec, which are currently low, he said.

“It’s true that the number of cases exceeded 2,000 for a few days — we returned to 1,600 (cases) yesterday — but because of the high vaccination rate, there’s been few consequences, for the moment, on hospitalizations,“ Legault said.

About 88 per cent of Quebec residents five and older have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 81 per cent have received two doses, the Health Department said Monday. The department also reported 1,628 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus.

COVID-19-related hospitalizations rose by six from the day before, to 268, after 30 people entered hospital and 24 patients were discharged. The number of people in intensive care rose by five, to 73.

Legault said Quebec’s public health officials are watching the situation in Ontario, where that province’s pandemic advisory table estimated that 21 per cent of daily new COVID-19 infections involved the Omicron variant.

Quebec’s public health institute said Monday it has confirmed one more case of the Omicron variant in the province, for a total of eight. There were 10 presumed cases that had not yet been confirmed through genetic sequencing, it added.

Meanwhile, the Health Department on Monday reported two outbreaks of COVID-19 in provincial jails. It said 13 inmates at the Rivière-des-Prairies detention centre in Montreal have active cases of COVID-19, as do 13 staff members. Sixteen inmates at the jail in Sorel-Tracy, Que., northeast of Montreal, also have active cases of COVID-19.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 13, 2021.

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.