Ontario's chief medical officer of health wants to see the closure of the Canada/U.S. border to non-essential travel extended further.
In an interview with BlackburnNews.com, Dr. David Williams said their recommendation to Premier Doug Ford is that they're still not at ease with reopening the border.
The closure has been extended monthly since March 21 with the next deadline looming September 21.
"We would like to see if that could be extended further until we get a much more, I would say solid management of the incoming individuals from outside the country, to ensure that there is total compliance and monitoring of the federal quarantine law," said Dr. Williams. "To ensure the ongoing safety so we don't have a repeat of the experience back in early March where we had a large influx of people unbeknowningly infected and that really set us up on our epidemic curve."
Ontario's chief medical officer Dr. David Williams.
Ontario's COVID-19 case count was over 45,000 with more than 2,800 deaths while Michigan's was beyond 123,000 and 6,900 deaths.
Dr. Williams reiterated his support for Ontario's return to school plan, saying the government put a pile of planning, lots of funding, and many different initiatives into it.
He said having kids safely back in school is important for their development and mental health.
"So we put a number of checks and balances in place and we continue to ramp-up our monitoring with our enhanced case contact management, testing, as well as our public health nurses in schools, so we're prepared but we're not going in assuming nothing will happen. We're going to say if it does, how do we move on it quickly and contain it."
The province has launched a COVID-19 website specific to schools and licenced child care centres.
Dr. Williams said it's very important that there be a free flow of information in schools and child care centres pertaining to COVID so parents, students, teachers and staff are aware of the status in their jurisdictions.
-With files from Colin Gowdy