Ontario restaurants, gyms and other small businesses cannot pin their hopes on reopening in 13 days.

“So I can’t guarantee the 26th, please stay tuned as we’ll be watching the same data as those at the science table and we collaborate with them to be able to inform public health measures,” said Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore.

Whenever the reopening happens, it will be ‘staged and phased.’

In addition to watching hospitalization numbers, Dr. Moore says an important metric is that those 50 and over and immuno-compromised people get their booster shots to prevent hospitalizations.

“As we moved into these public health measure we would reverse out so the last thing to open would be mass gatherings of 20,000 people in a stadium because those can be super spreading events, we would open all of those that we first closed on the 5th of January.”

Dr. Moore expects to get greater clarity next week on when Omicron will plateau and doesn’t want to see a rebound of patients going into hospital as a result of the reopening.

Meantime, some immunocompromised residents can book 4th COVID vaccine shots starting Friday, January 14 if it’s been at least 84 days after third dose.

These include transplant patients, those with rheumatoid arthritis, crohn’s disease, colitis and other auto immune disorders.

The province is reporting 35 new deaths Thursday from the virus with 3,630 in hospital due to COVID-19 and 500 are in ICU.