With local COVID-19 cases on the rise, new restrictions will go into effect in Chatham-Kent this Friday.
Those changes were announced by the Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit on Monday night, and include a limit of 10 people for indoor social gatherings.
While there were more restrictions announced for weddings, funerals, and religious services, no new restrictions were announced for restaurants and bars.
"We haven't seen any outbreaks related to restaurants and bars in Chatham-Kent, so I didn't see any reason to penalize those businesses when they haven't been a problem," said Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Colby. "So this was tailored to Chatham-Kent's unique situation."
The rules for sports teams are also staying the same for now.
"We have a lot of sports teams isolated because of exposures, but it's not usually the sports venue that caused that," said Dr. Colby. "They got their exposures from household and gathering exposures."
There are now 15 people at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance with COVID-19, and Dr. Colby said he felt he had to act and impose extra restrictions.
"We got word down from the province that they're not going to do that province-wide, even though this is not a unique situation in Chatham-Kent. The numbers are going up in almost all of the health unit jurisdictions around the province."
The Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit announced 15 new cases of COVID-19 Tuesday morning, but with 13 resolved cases, the active case count only went up two, to 140.
There is also a new outbreak at Sainte-Marie French-Catholic Elementary School in Chatham with three cases. Two cases were also marked as resolved. one at an unnamed manufacturing business, and one at a place of worship.