Ontario Premier Doug Ford is seen with Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens in a Dec. 10, 2018, file photo.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
The mayor of Windsor, Ont., says his city will proceed cautiously to Stage 3 of reopening, and will ask for additional resources if local cases increase in the coming weeks.
Drew Dilkens says he is confident that declining COVID-19 cases in the region over the last week make it safe to reopen further.
The Windsor-Essex region, which has been held back because of outbreaks on local farms, will proceed to Stage 3 of the province’s reopening framework on Wednesday.
The local health unit says there are 131 active COVID-19 cases in the community – 63 of them among agri-food workers.
The medical officer of health, Dr. Wajid Ahmed, says on-farm testing has taken place at 38 of the 176 region’s farms.
The local health unit reports five farms remain in outbreak along with four manufacturing businesses.
Ontario reported 33 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday – the lowest daily case count in months – but the province’s health minister attributed part of the drop to “routine data cleanup.”
Toronto Public Health removed 21 cases, including some duplicates, from its total, Christine Elliott said in a tweet.
She said an additional 75 cases have been resolved.
Sixty people are in hospital with COVID-19, with 21 of them in intensive care and 12 on ventilators.
The province’s total case count is now 40,194, with 36,456 marked as resolved and 2,786 deaths.
The province says it processed 21,581 tests over the last 24 hours.
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