Legault to announce loosening of certain COVID-19 measures tomorrow

Quebec Premier François Legault says he’ll soon announce the loosening of certain COVID-19 measures.

In a French post shared to Facebook on Saturday, the premier cautioned that current public health regulations will remain in place for “at least another week.”

Legault said he plans on revealing changes to the province’s measures on Tuesday at 5 pm.

Specifically, the premier said he’s like to “give some breathing room” to retail stores and businesses.

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Legault said the changes would come into effect after February 8, the date the province-wide curfew is scheduled to expire.

While saying that things “could change for all sorts of reasons,” he plans to give Quebecers “enough time to adjust to the new rules.”

Businesses that have been deemed “non-essential” have been closed throughout Quebec since December 25. A nightly province-wide curfew went into effect on January 9, prohibiting anyone who’s not an essential worker from going into the public from 8 pm to 5 am.

Legault didn’t specify in his post if tomorrow’s press conference will be curfew-related.

On Saturday, Quebec’s Health Minister Christian Dubé said the decline in hospitalizations was “encouraging” and that the government-issued curfew has been effective .

Last week, the premier said that Quebec is “very far from the point where we’ll be able to loosen all measures” and prefaced that Tuesday’s announcement would be “regionally-based,” specifically towards Quebec regions that have lower COVID-19 cases.

Legault said the curfew is “working well” and says public health knows the “virus spreads in workplaces, schools, and a lot in people’s homes.”

On Monday, Quebec public health reported its lowest daily COVID-19 increase over the past 11 weeks, since November 16.

To conclude his post, Legault said as premier, he “consults a lot of people before making decisions” and said his March 23rd decision to put Quebec on hiatus was the “hardest decision of my life.”