Public Health amended some parts of the province’s COVID-19 recovery phases this week, but it won’t be removing self-isolation guidelines for those coming from out of the province before Christmas.
At Friday’s Public Health briefing, Health Minister Dorothy Shephard pointed out Christmas is now less than two weeks away.
“If you are not already in New Brunswick and self-isolating, you should not be opening presents with your family on Christmas morning. Nor should you be having Christmas dinner with your family,” Shephard said. “The risk is high.”
GNB has also updated mask rules in the yellow, orange, and red phases of COVID-19 recovery.
Perhaps the biggest change to the rules is an amendment to outdoor mask requirements in orange phase zones.
New Brunswickers in orange zones are no longer required to wear masks outdoors as long as they maintain two meters of physical distance from people outside their household bubbles.
“If a person is outdoors, and is able to maintain physical distancing, the risk of transmission is low,” said Shephard. “Therefore a mask is not required.”
The province also reversed course on a recent decision to require masks when using drive-throughs in yellow phase areas.
However, Shephard said it doesn’t hurt to keep masks on when interacting with drive-through workers.
“If you’re more comfortable wearing a mask in a drive-through, please do so. Every additional prevention method that you do is going to benefit you, especially through this holiday season.”
Masks are still required in drive-throughs for businesses in orange or red phases.
Shephard also shared a few words of encouragement for the Edmundston zone after it entered the orange phase for the first time Saturday.
“The good news is that every time we have had to move a zone to orange, we’ve been able to quickly get the situation under control and we are confident we’ll be able to do that in zone 4.”
