Lambton's Medical Officer of Health is still urging residents to be cautious, as the province entered Step 1 of its reopening plan on Friday.
Changes include allowing outdoor dining with four people per table, retail stores opening at reduced capacity, and permitting 10 people to gather outdoors.
Despite that, Dr. Sudit Ranade said although it's generally safer to gather outdoors, the purpose of the interaction matters.
"It's the social component of it," said Dr. Ranade. "The fact that you're together with people that you like, and spending time with them in close proximity, that is the risk factor for disease. That risk is lowered by being outside but it's not zero just because you're outside. There are a lot of different reasons why people are outside. The most social of those reasons are still more likely to cause disease transmission than the reasons for being outside that keep you with members of your own household, like going for a walk."
Dr. Ranade added that just because something is open, doesn't mean it's fully safe, and we won't know the impacts on cases for about two weeks. He said gatherings will always be safer if they're time limited, outdoors, and properly distanced.
As of Wednesday, 87,748 Lambton residents have received a COVID-19 vaccine, including 12,537 second doses.
Nearly 12 per cent of the local eligible population has been fully vaccinated.
Dr. Ranade said he'd feel comfortable easing border restrictions once a high number of Canadians have received both shots.
That number was at around 10 per cent as of early June.
"I'm much more comfortable with the importation of cases into our community, when over 75 per cent of our people have received both doses of vaccine. If the vaccines are really good at interrupting transmission, then we wouldn't see large outbreaks or cases due to the influx of people that we would expect from opening the border."
