We missed being able to dine outside, we missed coffee with friends, we missed the mall. But we also missed – and our uncultivated hairstyles bear witness to this – the hairdresser. From tomorrow, with Ontario entering Step 2, it will be possible to do all this and more. The long-awaited relaxation of some of the restrictions with reopening non-essential shops, albeit at 25% of capacity, bodes well after so many difficult months.

The rush to vaccines and the drastic decrease in infections in the province have been the determining factors for the transition to Step 2 although, as doctors and virologists continue to recommend, we must not lower our guard. The Indian variant – renamed Delta – is scary. Its rate of contagion – almost all active cases are due to this strain of Covid – worries.

But tomorrow, the province, will return to apparent normality with outdoor social meetings with a maximum of 25 people, indoors with 5, with outdoor dinners with no more than six people per table, with contactless sports, night campsites for children, with spectators at 25% of the capacity in outdoor sports facilities.  Non-essential retail 25% of capacity, essential retail at 50%. Indoor religious services, including weddings and funerals, are allowed up to 25% capacity per room. And theatres, concert halls and cinemas also reopen – again with 25% of capacity.

What was normal until about a year and a half ago and which had been erased by the pandemic is back on tiptoe in our lives. And perhaps, to trigger Step 3 you won’t even have to wait another 21 days. The Premier of Ontario hinted at this. Ford suggested that if new Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Kieran Moore will give the green light, reopening could proceed faster than his government’s current plan. At the moment, the conditions for this to happen seem to be there. Provincial vaccination rates now exceed the rates outlined by the Ford government in the “Roadmap to Reopening”: until Sunday, 76% of the province’s adults received the first dose of the vaccine while more than a third (33%) is now fully immunized. In the “Roadmap to reopening” for the transition to Step 3, a first dose rate of between 70 and 80% is required, while the full vaccination rate must be 25%: both conditions are therefore already met.

Also tomorrow the new LTC minister Rod Phillips announced that he will relax the restrictions further in long-term care homes: from 7 July, up to 10 residents will be able to gather outdoors while two family members can visit their loved ones in the LTC.