What to watch for this week on moving out of Level 3
CBC
Level 3 will be over in a week. Unless it's not.
Premier Blaine Higgs has been adamant that the province's strictest level of restrictions in the fight against the Omicron variant will end next Sunday at midnight.
He has called the near-lockdown a "last chance" to slow the spread and vowed it would last 16 days.
But there have been shifts and ambiguities in the rhetoric and the criteria surrounding that target.
Last week Higgs said in a statement that Level 3 would end "no later" than midnight on Jan. 30, a sudden new formulation that implied exiting restrictions even earlier was a possibility.
Then at a briefing Friday he was back to definitive: "We have nine days left," he declared twice.
A few minutes later, he hedged. "Yes, the thing could go off the rails." But, he added, "it is not looking like that at this stage."
According to Higgs, while hospitalizations haven't peaked, "our ability to manage the situation is improving" now that many hospital workers who contracted COVID are finished their isolation periods and returning to work.
So many New Brunswickers will be watching closely this week to see if the province can get to Level 2. Here's what to look for:
Higgs's comments have swung from insistence on that Jan. 30 date to acknowledging that "of course" it might have to change.
One thing is clear: the premier was very reluctant to go to Level 3 in the first place. He insisted right up until the Jan. 13 announcement that stricter rules weren't worth the trouble because many people wouldn't follow them.
"I'm very concerned that people will decide, 'I've had enough,' and I mean, I've had enough and I could have taken that position as well," he said during a Jan. 14 interview on CBC's Information Morning Fredericton.
Higgs said Friday that, in fact, most people "are indeed doing their part to meet the criteria, with a few minor exceptions."
Contacts were down 30 per cent, he was told by Public Health officials earlier that morning.
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