Ontario Updating Public Health Measures and Guidance in Response to Omicron

In response to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the Ontario government, in consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, is taking further action to provide additional protection to high-risk settings, and continue to safeguard hospitals and ICU capacity as the province continues to rapidly accelerate its booster dose rollout. Based on the latest evidence and Ontario’s high rate of vaccination, the province is also updating testing and isolation guidelines to protect our most vulnerable and maintain the stability of critical workforces, including frontline health care workers, first responders and critical infrastructure like energy and food and supply chains.

Updated Testing and Isolation Guidelines in Response to Omicron

In consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, Ontario is updating its COVID-19 testing and isolation guidelines. These updates follow recent changes in other jurisdictions in Canada and the United Kingdom to ensure publicly funded testing and case and contact management resources are available for the highest-risk settings and to protect the most vulnerable and help keep critical services running.

Effective December 31, 2021, publicly-funded PCR testing will be available only for high-risk individuals who are symptomatic and/or are at risk of severe illness from COVID-19, including for the purposes of confirming a COVID-19 diagnosis to begin treatment, and workers and residents in the highest risk settings, as well as vulnerable populations. Members of the general public with mild symptoms are asked not to seek testing. A full list of eligible individuals can be found here.

In addition, most individuals with a positive result from a rapid antigen test will no longer be required or encouraged to get a confirmatory PCR or rapid molecular test.

Ontario is also changing the required isolation period based on growing evidence that generally healthy people with COVID-19 are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop. Individuals with COVID-19 who are vaccinated, as well as children under 12, will be required to isolate for five days following the onset of symptoms. Their household contacts are also required to isolate with them. These individuals can end isolation after five days if their symptoms are improved for at least 24 hours and all public health and safety measures, such as masking and physical distancing, are followed. Non-household contacts are required to self-monitor for ten days.

Individuals who are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or immunocompromised will be required to isolate for 10 days. While individuals who work or live in high-risk health care settings are recommended to return to work after 10 days from their last exposure or symptom onset or from their date of diagnosis, to ensure sufficient staffing levels workers will have the opportunity to return to work after isolating for seven days with negative PCR or rapid antigen test results, which will be provided by the province through the health care setting.

As of December 20, a total of 49.6 million rapid antigen tests have been deployed since the beginning of the pandemic, with the vast majority (approximately 41 million) deployed to priority sectors, including hospitals, long-term care and retirement homes and schools. In addition to Ontario directly procuring additional rapid tests where possible, the province is continuing to urge the federal government to make more rapid tests available to provinces as quickly as possible. The province is also evaluating the potential role of antibody testing, including an analysis of how it is used in other jurisdictions, to provide another tool in the fight against COVID-19.

Further Reducing the Spread of COVID-19 in Larger Indoor Settings

To further strengthen its response to Omicron and reduce opportunities for close contact as the province gets as many vaccines into arms as possible, effective 12:01 a.m. on Friday, December 31, 2021, Ontario is restricting spectator capacity to 50 per cent of the usual seating capacity or 1,000 people, whichever is less, in the indoor areas of the following settings:

• Spectator areas of facilities used for sports and recreational fitness activities (e.g., sporting events);
• Concert venues; and
• Theatres.

The government and the Chief Medical Officer of Health will continue to monitor the data to determine when it is safe to lift capacity limits in these settings.