Ford government says province nears stage three of reopening

"We hope to be able to move into the next stage as soon as possible," said Health Minister Christine Elliott. "It's looking very good, but we still need another week's data to really inform the situation, and then decisions will be made about the opening of stage three."

Northern and eastern Ontario have been in stage two for weeks now, along with much of southwestern Ontario, meaning hair salons, shopping malls, bar and restaurant patios were able to open.

The spread is largely contained everywhere but in the Greater Toronto Area, Hamilton, Niagra, Windsor-Essex, Lambton and Haldimand-Norfolk.

Of Ontario's 34 public health clinics, over half of them have been reporting under 10 active cases for the past week with 15 of those units reporting three or less.

Ottawa, Waterloo Region and London advanced to stage two before any other areas in Ontario, and those cities have a combined population of six million people. Many of their restrictions were first lifted on June 12. These areas combined are averaging less than 35 cases a day over the past couple of weeks.

Christine Elliot said the province is in discussion now about when to announce the rest of the province is moving to stage three, however some areas will have increased ease in restrictions while others won't, depending on the level of spread in each area.

"We have to do it safely," said Ontario Premier Doug Ford. "We will do it safely, and we're going to do it in steps as we did before. We just have to continue seeing the numbers go in the right direction."

"We want to move to stage three," said Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa's chief medical officer of health. "We want all the businesses to be open. We want people to be able to continue to get back to work."