Guelph and Wellington County have been moved to ‘yellow’ as Ontario shifts to a tiered and colour-coded system for managing COVID-19 pandemic measures.
The provincial government released a list Friday classifying each public health unit under the new red, orange, yellow and green risk-level system – a change that will take effect at midnight.
The new system was announced earlier this week in an effort to fight the pandemic in a more targeted manner. When it was announced, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health was classified as ‘green.’
The city was moved up to yellow because of a number of indicators, mainly the rate of cases. The health unit reported 67 active coronavirus cases across its jurisdiction on Friday, including 31 in Guelph.
Waterloo Region will also be moved to yellow, while Peel Region will be the only jurisdiction in Ontario in the red zone — the highest alert level short of a lockdown.
The province said trends in public health data will be reviewed weekly and will determine if public health units should stay where they are or be moved to a different level.
While there are no additional closures in Guelph and Wellington County as it goes from green to yellow, it does mean there will be additional measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
It will see restrictions placed on when bars and restaurants are allowed to open and their volume of music, as well as spacing between patrons at gyms, among others that were in place under the green level.
A complete breakdown of the measures can be found on the Ontario government’s website.