BRANTFORD -- Brant County will be leaving the orange zone of Ontario's COVID-19 reopening plan on Monday to enter the more restrictive red.
The public health unit for the area says the rise in variant cases over the last week has planted them firmly in the red zone.
The Fitness Centre owner Tammara Lynch had a busy last day in the orange zone on Sunday, where she was allowed to have 50 people inside. On Monday, however, that number goes down to 10.
"I've spent the last three days rearranging my schedules so that my classes can run, but I can't have anybody in my weight centre until the classes are over," she said. "Members now have to wait in the parking lot before they can come in because they can't use my change room. It's a nightmare."
Despite the province increasing indoor dining capacity this weekend, only four people from the same household are allowed to be seated together.
"That's going to be a huge difference for us," said Chrissy Walker, the manager at Angel's Family Restaurant. "We're going to lose a lot of business that way."
Downtown Brantford BIA chair Barbara Sutherland says the change will hurt the line, but that business owners have become adaptable.
"Fortunately in Brantford we only had one business close during the pandemic, and we've had 12 new businesses open," she said. "So that speaks so much to their resilience of entrepreneurs and they're going to find a way around it."
Brantford Mayor Kevin Davis says the move to the red zone is necessary, since the number of variants of concern has jumped from seven to 29 in the past week.
”If the trend line keeps getting worse we'll be in lockdown and we absolutely want to avoid that," he said.
In the last couple of days, the number of COVID-19 cases has gone down slightly in Brant County. Davis says he is hopeful the county won't stay in the red level for too long as long as everyone continues to follow public health guidelines.
