Region hoppers bringing COVID-19 to Mississauga and Brampton, says Peel’s top medical expert
Published April 7, 2021 at 3:36 pm
Loose COVID restrictions in other areas of Ontario are contributing to the spread of the virus in Mississauga and Brampton.
That is the opinion of Peel Region’s Medical Officer of Health (MOH) who believes the lack of a co-ordinated approach to containing the virus across the GTA has led to some of the health problems we face here.
Speaking at a press conference in Brampton this morning, MOH Dr. Lawrence Loh said the looser restrictions in other areas have made it easy for Peel residents to “region hop” into areas where dining, shopping and personal care services are more widely available.
“In Peel, one of the challenges that we’ve had are people travelling to areas that had looser restrictions, contracting COVID, and bringing it back here to be counted in our case counts,” said. Dr. Loh. “So the decision taken to have other jurisdictions in the Greater Toronto Area to have looser restrictions has contributed to keeping us in lockdown.”
Since November Peel Region has been in the grey lockdown zone in Ontario’s guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The grey zone is the most restrictive zone but neighbouring regions such as Halton, York, Durham and Hamilton have been at times in the looser red zone.
Dr. Loh said that moving forward the provincial government should take a broader approach when determining restrictions to discourage region hopping.
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