Community restrictions to be lifted

As of this Wednesday, COVID-19 restrictions will be a thing of the past for most Nova Scotians.

The province announced Monday that all remaining restrictions in the community will be lifted. For example, people who get the virus will not be required to isolate, although it will still be strongly recommended. As well, indoor masking will shift to “optional” from strongly recommended unless somebody is ill or the indoor setting is crowded.

“We are at a place now with our epidemiology and our ongoing adaptation to COVID being with us for the long term that we feel we’re at a point now where it’s appropriate to do what many other provinces are already doing and make some adjustments to our last remaining restrictions in the areas of isolation, masking and testing, especially asymptomatic testing,” Strang said during a video news conference Monday afternoon.

Although smaller waves of COVID-19 variants are expected over the summer and a bigger spike is possible in the fall, he said the province’s high vaccine coverage and the low risk of severe disease from Omicron variants will make the virus manageable without restrictions.

STRANG: IF YOU’RE SICK, STAY HOME

Although people are no longer legally required to isolate, Strang said if you have respiratory symptoms such as coughing and fever, you should stay home because that’s when you’re most infectious whether it’s COVID-19 or the flu.

People who don’t have symptoms will no longer be offered COVID testing, but rapid tests will continue to be available at public libraries and MLA offices.

Those with symptoms will still have access to COVID-19 testing at testing centres.

Most restrictions in highrisk settings such as hospitals and long-term-care facilities will remain in place. That means health-care and nursing home workers will continue to be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

COVID DEATHS ‘A REALITY’

Although Strang said it’s “not inevitable” that the lifting of restrictions will lead to

more COVID-19 cases and deaths, “we have to live with COVID for the long term, it’s not going away. Does that mean there’s going to be some people who are at increased risk and there will be some people that die from COVID? Yes. There are people that die every year from influenza and I don’t mean at all to be dismissive of that but that is a reality.”

At least 442 people have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic, including 330 since the Omicron waves began in December 2021.

Tight restrictions made sense at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was no underlying immunity, Strang said, but now that most people are vaccinated against the virus, it’s the right time to lift restrictions that have significant impacts on finances, mental health and delayed access to care in the healthcare system.

NDP MLA ‘CONCERNED’

The NDP’S health-care spokesperson Susan Leblanc said Nova Scotians should continue to abide by public health’s recommendations but at the same time she said lifting all community restrictions is worrisome.

“I mean, I’m concerned and I know there’s lots of people that are concerned about it,” Leblanc said in an interview Monday. “When the restrictions started being lifted in March, we saw a real uptick in cases, hospitalizations and for a while, there was, you know, quite a lot of death happening. I know those numbers are coming down now but there’s still significant COVID in the community.”

Leblanc worries that lifting restrictions entirely could add to the burden of a health-care system that’s already in “a terrible situation” because of staffing shortages and a spike in visits to emergency rooms.

Strang and the Tim Houston government has said Nova Scotians have the tools to deal with COVID without restrictions but “in fact we don’t,” Leblanc said. “We don’t have paid sick days in Nova Scotia and so Dr. Strang is saying stay home if you’re sick, if you have the symptoms of COVID-19, but there’s lots of people who cannot do that. … There’s lots of people who are going to be going to work with COVID19.”

Liberal MLA Braedon Clark said his party remains concerned about the continuing reduction in public information about COVID-19. The province will reduce COVID-19 reports to a monthly basis from the current weekly, although the COVID-19 dashboard will continue to be updated weekly.

Clark said he acknowledges that a balance must be struck between protection against COVID and too many restrictions, “But at times we’ve been out of balance a bit over the last 10 months especially around getting information and finding out what’s going on so that’s why for me a big issue going forward will be will we get information returned if we get a surge in the fall.”

For the complete list of changes announced Monday, go to tinyurl. com/3yswec45.