It’s been one week since the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph (WDG) region entered into the red "control zone."

Warden of Wellington County, Kelly Linton, said Dr. Nicola Mercer, Medical Officer of Health for WDG Public Health, said we could have been in the red zone weeks ago.

“Based on our numbers, but she (Dr. Nicola Mercer) was doing whatever she could to keep us in orange [zone], but the numbers keep going up across Wellington, Dufferin, [and] Guelph,” Linton said.

Linton said he spoke with Dr. Mercer two weeks ago today, and at that point, Wellington, Dufferin, and Guelph on its own, were already in red, even though the county was still in the orange zone.

He added that the local numbers here are just too high.

Linton said what’s different now, compared to the beginning of the pandemic back in March, is that WDG Public Health does a lot of contact tracing, and they have a better sense of where the case numbers are coming from.

“And what Dr. Mercer and [WDG] Public Health are telling us, is that the numbers are going up because of internal dynamics,” Linton said. “Extended families getting together, neighbours getting together, friends getting together, and that’s why we’re seeing more numbers.”

Linton said for some reason, people still think that they’re only going to get COVID-19 from a stranger, and that’s not the case.

“There’s people in our communities that aren’t following some pretty simple rules, and that’s what is driving us to [the] red [zone], and hopefully not further, but we have to be very concerned that we are heading towards a lockdown.”

Ontario’s premier will be making an announcement at 1 p.m. today, on whether or not the region will be heading into a lockdown before Christmas.