York Region's restaurants and bars are permitted to increase indoor capacity to 50 per cent, under a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions in the province's reopening framework announced today.
Restaurants in the red zones of Ontario's colour-coded guidelines can increase their capacity — currently capped at 10 in York Region — up to a maximum of 50 people effective Saturday March 20, at 12:01 a.m., according to the Ontario government's news release.
Physical distancing measures remain in place, and only members of the same household can sit at a table together both indoors or outdoors, with the exception of single people or caregivers.
"To support the province's economic recovery, the government is cautiously adjusting dining capacity limits at restaurants, bars and other food and drink establishments, for regions in the grey-lockdown, red-control and orange-restrict levels of the framework," the release stated.
Total occupancy at 50 per cent of capacity in orange zone restaurants and bars can't exceed 100 patrons.
Indoor dining continues to be prohibited for Toronto and Peel in the grey-lockdown level, however, outdoor dining will be permitted as of Saturday.
From March 10 to 15, Peel and Toronto case rates increased by 4.5 per cent, to 86.5 cases per 100,000 people in Toronto, and by 8.6 per cent, to 103.6 cases per 100,000 people in Peel, both well above the provincial average, the province said.
In that same time period, York Region saw the seven-day average of cases per 100,000 increase from 57 cases to 72 cases. As of March 19, the incidence rate had increased to 80 cases per 100,000 in the past past seven days.
