COVID-19 vaccine passports that are required to enter some indoor public settings such as gyms and restaurants or to drop the mask mandate.Christine Elliott made the comments at a press conference announcing free rapid tests, after she was pressed several time by journalists if Ontario would consider dropping the vaccine passport as Saskatchewan and Alberta recently announced.“We still need to be very careful,” Elliott said.“We are not telling the people of Ontario that this is going to remain in place forever.
No. But we are not in the clear, just yet, and so we need to continue to protect Ontarians, protect each other with the passports and with the masks at this point.” Free COVID rapid antigen tests now available at Ontario grocery stores, pharmacies at one-box limit On Tuesday, Saskatchewan was the first province to announce it wound be ending the use of COVID-19 vaccine passports beginning on Feb.
14, with facemasks in indoor public settings to lift by end of February.Alberta then followed by announcing its COVID-19 vaccine passport program would end first thing Wednesday.
Almost all public health restrictions would be lifted by March 1 — including masking — if hospitalizations continue to improve.“We have no plans, currently, to drop the passport vaccination situation or masking,” Elliot said. “We always said that we were going to take a very cautious, phased, prudent approach to opening up and that’s the path that we’re going to follow.”On Wednesday, Ontario reported another drop in hospitalizations with 2,059 people with COVID in hospitals with 449 in intensive care units.