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Greater than 4.6 million folks have arrived in Canada because the border closed final March however fewer than one-quarter of them had been ordered to quarantine — the remainder had been deemed “important” travellers and exempted from the requirement.
Canada started to restrict overseas journey in March, first asking Canadians themselves to keep away from non-essential journey exterior the nation, after which as of March 16 barring entry to anybody who wasn’t Canadian, a everlasting resident or a U.S. citizen.
The ban was prolonged to incorporate People on March 21. The 30-day closure of the U.S. border has now been prolonged seven occasions, and whereas it’s at the moment set to run out Nov. 21, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated to an Ontario radio station Friday that he’s not anxious to reopen the border any time quickly.
“I feel all of us need to get issues again to regular as shortly as attainable. We additionally know that as a way to get issues again to regular now we have to manage the unfold of COVID-19,” Trudeau mentioned on CKSY in Chatham-Kent Friday morning.
“At this level, the dangers are nonetheless too nice to reopen the border.”
Canadians and everlasting residents are allowed to return residence, however should quarantine for 14 days until they fall into an important class, like truck drivers, airline crew members, the navy or folks coming to assist with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Important travellers are requested to put on masks once they can’t bodily distance from others, and medical employees are requested to not deal with folks over the age of 65 for 14 days.
Important travellers additionally made up the majority of arrivals based on information offered by the Public Well being Company of Canada. It mentioned 3.5 million travellers, as of Oct. 20, had been deemed important, and one other 1.1 million had been thought-about non-essential and had been requested to quarantine for 2 weeks.
PHAC follows up with most requested to quarantine with dwell or automated calls, and has requested RCMP or native police to confirm the whereabouts of 247,137 folks requested to quarantine.
The company mentioned 76 tickets and eight summons have been issued to folks present in violation of the quarantine order.
PHAC’s statistics do differ from information revealed weekly by the Canada Border Providers Company, which lists complete arrivals by land, rail and air, in addition to whether or not air travellers arrived from the U.S. or one other nation.
That information exhibits journey to this nation plunged greater than 90 per cent because the borders had been closed in comparison with the identical interval in 2019.
Nearly half of all of the travellers arriving since March had been truck drivers, based on CBSA.
CBSA additionally says 63 per cent of air travellers had been both Canadians or everlasting residents.
Cole Davidson, spokesman for Well being Minister Patty Hajdu, mentioned the border closure is crucial to Canada’s COVID-19 technique.
“This is a crucial software in protecting our households and communities secure, and it’s working,” he mentioned.
Well being Canada information protecting 80 per cent of the confirmed instances of COVID-19 to this point exhibits about 4.Four per cent of them concerned latest travellers or individuals who had come into contact with them.
The federal government started permitting overseas nationals who’re instant kin of a Canadian or everlasting resident to return to Canada in June, and extra not too long ago expanded that to incorporate prolonged members of the family, similar to grandparents or siblings, in addition to worldwide college students.
Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press
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