Personal care services and salons to stay closed in Toronto and shutter across Ontario

Those of you who were finally hoping to get those roots dyed and nails done will have to continue doing it from home for the foreseeable future, because hair salons and personal care services won't be reopening in Toronto any time soon.

Premier Doug Ford announced Thursday afternoon that his government is using the emergency brake and moving the entirety of Ontario into a four week shutdown period to curb the alarming surge in COVID-19 cases brought on by new variants of concern, meaning the previously-announced plan to reopen Toronto salons by appointment on April 12 is no more. 

The provincial government announced just one week ago that hair and nail salons, barber shops and tattoo parlours would finally be able to resume operations in Toronto after being shuttered since November, but Mayor John Tory quickly warned that this decision was far from being set in stone.

Toronto has had the longest lockdown in North America, w indoor dining closed for exactly 300 days since the pandemic began. Here is the data:
Restaurants: 171 consecutive days (300 total)
Gyms: 164 consecutive days (293 total)
Hair/nail salons: 129 consecutive days (221 total)

— Dan Kelly (@CFIB) April 1, 2021

"I certainly myself can tell you right now that I will not be supporting anything less than extremely cautious reopenings in the event that the health numbers are poor," the mayor said at the time. "And you know, unfortunately, the trend lines from this past week have not been good." 

Pandemic indicators have only worsened since then, with an all-time high of 430 COVID patients in ICUs as of Friday and new modelling projecting as many as 6,000 new cases per day by the end of April.

As a result, these services will have to weather being closed for a while longer — a move which likely won't go over too well with struggling business owners who already feel they've been unfairly targeted by public health measures.

And since this shutdown applies to the whole province, personal care services and salons throughout the province will likewise be required to shut down as of April 3.

"Ontario, like many other provinces and jurisdictions around the world, is in the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate action is required to help turn the tide," said Minister of Health Christine Elliott in a statement. 

"Implementing a provincewide emergency brake was not an easy decision to make and is not one we take lightly. As we continue to vaccinate more Ontarians, the end is in sight, but right now these necessary measures will help to stop the spread of variants in our communities, protect capacity in our health care system, and save lives."