Soon, the province of Ontario will be entering the second lockdown of this year, but will it help?

Danny Williamson, communication specialist with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph (WDG) Public Health said the virus transmits from person-to-person, so locking down those opportunities for the virus to spread among people are key.

“That gives time for those cases to happen, to get tested, to resolve, and then we can get our case count back lower, and then it kind of resets where we are,” Williamson said. “It takes us down from that 2,000 plus cases a day to something much lower.”

Williamson said the next 28 days will be challenging with going into the winter, as well as, a strange holiday season.

“However, we know that the vaccine is starting to roll out across the province, we know that our most vulnerable will be getting it in the coming weeks and in the next few months, and then really, it’s looking very promising that most of us that want the vaccine will be able to get it in the early fall of next year,” Williamson said.

He said that by the time we get to next Christmas, people could be looking at something much closer to normal.

Although, Williamson said the COVID-19 modelling shows that there could be 40,000 cases between now and Boxing Day.

“I think it’s really important for people to think about, is even though the lockdown starts on Boxing Day at 12:01 a.m., we can all start today, people can start changing their behaviour today,” Williamson said. “Start restricting those outings to essential only, we can start right now, we don’t have to wait for 12:01 on [December] 26.”

Williamson added that it’s really worthwhile for people to think about not waiting, and really start to get themselves into the lockdown mentality.

In the final week of the lockdown, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health will review key trends in public health indicators, and those indicators from each public health unit region will be assessed, to determine the appropriate zone each one heads into after the lockdown.

For more information on the lockdown, please click here.

Danny Williamson, communication specialist with WDG Public Health: