Further COVID-19 restrictions are not off the table, according to New Brunswick’s Health Minister Dorothy Shephard.
Shephard said she is concerned about every region in the province as cases continue to climb and hospitalizations are on the rise again.
Circuit breakers in several zones have been lifted, with Shephard saying some, like the ones in the Moncton region, were not effective.
“We have the power to control the spread of COVID-19 and it is very concerning that the numbers are going up so we may very well be forced to go that direction,” she said, making note of the Christmas holiday.
She said people know what they have to do to protect themselves and urges people to keep their close contacts small.
The Department of Health, she said, is working on graphic information for the public to help them understand the severity of not following the rules amid the fourth wave.
“We need them to be part of the solution just as they have been all along,” she said. “Keep your circles small.”
Circuit breakers in zones 2, 3 and 4 were lifted earlier, and the remaining were lifted on Nov. 19.
Jean-Claude D’Amours, the Liberal health critic, said it isn’t really about the measures but rather how they are enforced.
“You can put any measures you want but somebody has to enforce,” he said in an interview Thursday. “We have discussed many times with public health to ask them what are you doing to ensure those measures will be respected.”
He said Zone 4, where his riding is, saw significant enforcement but he wasn’t confident that happened in other zones.
D’Amours said he believes that the majority will follow the rules, but it’s about the ones who won’t.
Green Party Leader David Coon echoed concerns about the circuit breakers.
“I was very concerned when they lifted the circuit breakers,” he said. “My feeling was that they needed to be improved to get a better handle on the local outbreaks and the regional outbreaks.”
Coon, alongside interim Liberal Leader Roger Melanson, left the COVID-19 all-party cabinet committee following the premier’s use of the emergency order to force health-care workers back on the job amid a strike.
“If I felt I was having a significant impact on policy, I wouldn’t have left,” he said, speaking to whether he’d return to the committee to potentially have an impact on policy decisions.
Melanson said the decisions were always in the hands of the premier and his cabinet; that’s still the case today and his presence on the committee doesn’t change that.
“The COVID-19 situation we are seeing right now is concerning so as an MLA and leader of the official Opposition, I’ll keep openly and freely offering ideas on how to address or improve the situation.”
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