The Ontario Ministry of Education will not mandate mask-wearing when students return to class this fall, Education Minister Stephen Lecce has confirmed.
. As well, recent wastewater monitoring shows an uptick in the virus compared to an all-time low in Ontario in June of this year.
Ontario first lifted its mask mandate in public spaces in March of 2022, when it was determined Ontario had come to a place where it could “manage” the virus. While the chance of a possible new wave might be worrying, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, clinician investigator for the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, says this fall’s COVID ebb is unlikely to be as significant as those in years past.
“We’ve been in Omicron since the winter of 2022,” he said in an interview. “But the waves have not been remotely as devastating as they were earlier on in the pandemic, like in 2020 and in 2021. This fall, barring the evolution of a really nasty variant, life will probably look much like it’s looked over the past year and a half.”
“The vast majority of the population has either received a vaccine, or been infected and recovered from the infection,” Bogoch continued. “That means the virus doesn’t wallop us as it did earlier in the pandemic. It still impacts us on an individual level, and a population level, but not nearly to the same degree.”