Keeping the Province Safe and Open

New framework will help protect the health and safety of Ontarians while avoiding broader closures

It’s clear COVID-19 will be with us for a while, which is why our PC government is releasing a new framework that will protect the health and safety of individuals and families, while avoiding broader closures across the province.

The Keeping Ontario Safe and Open Framework, developed in consultation with Ontario’s health experts, will serve as an early warning system allowing us to scale up and scale back public health restrictions on a regional or community basis in response to surges and waves of COVID-19.

The framework takes a transparent, comprehensive approach to protecting the health and safety of Ontarians, while avoiding broader closures. It ensures that public health measures are targeted, incremental and responsive to help stop the spread of COVID-19, keep our schools and businesses open, maintain health system capacity and protect our most vulnerable.

It categorizes public health unit regions into five levels: Green – Prevent, Yellow – Protect, Orange – Restrict, Red – Control, and Lockdown being a measure of last and urgent resort. Each level outlines the types of public health and workplace safety measures for businesses and organizations at each level. These include targeted measures for specific sectors, institutions, and other settings. As of November 7, 2020, the province will transition public health unit regions to the new framework.

Enhancements are also being made to ontario.ca/coronavirus to include information about the spread of the virus, and public health and health system capacity. This includes local cases by public health unit regions, the total number of cases, resolved cases, deaths, and tests completed and how many are positive. This information will help to better support businesses, organizations and local communities access key information to prepare in advance for any changes in their region.