Quebec loosening some COVID-19 gathering restrictions for Christmas

Quebec is loosening COVID-19 restrictions to allow up to 20 vaccinated people to gather privately for the holidays, starting Dec. 23.

Health Minister Christian Dube also announced the province will expand access to third doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

“Chronic illness or people with health problems increasing the risk of complications, people from isolated or remote communities, health workers, and pregnant women, these groups totalling a million people, are allowed to get the third dose,” said Dube.

Quebecers 60 and over will only be eligible for their booster shot starting in January.

Quebec currently offers third doses of COVID-19 vaccines to people 70 and over, to certain people with weakened immune systems and to those who received two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Despite concerns, the new Omicron variant doesn’t seem to be circulating locally and hasn’t created any major issues for the moment, said public health officials.

“Omicron, we’ll do some repeated tests over a few days,” said Public Health Director Horacio Arruda. “Delta is the main issue right now, but we are trying to catch any introduction (of Omicron) through travellers.”

Officials warn Quebecers should still be cautious, even with the loosened restrictions.

“The change that we announced, based on the recommendations of Dr. Arruda and his team, is to increase the actual limit from 10 to 20, but it’s a firm recommendation that these people are vaccinated, and we strongly recommend not to have unvaccinated people in these gatherings for obvious reasons,” said Dube.

Dr. Arruda echoed those sentiments.

“The best gift you can have for Christmas is to get the vaccine,” he said. “Because the ones who are in intensive care in hospitals are the non-vaccinated people.”

Quebec reported 1,234 new cases of COVID-19 Tuesday and five additional deaths linked to the novel coronavirus.

The province is expected to release more COVID-19 modelling and projections on Thursday.