Chatham-Kent’s mayor eagerly awaits the lifting of more COVID restrictions in Ontario.

Darrin Canniff said he is eager to have local businesses return to somewhat normal operations.

“I can’t wait to have those restrictions pulled,” Canniff said. “We’re waiting on a number of details from that, but looking forward to getting our services open and moving forward with maybe getting council meetings back in person once all these (restrictions) are lifted. It’s an exciting time to finally get through a lot of this.”

While he hasn’t had a chance to sit down with medical officer Dr. David Colby at this point, Canniff sees no reason why Chatham-Kent won’t keep in step with the province when it comes to easing restrictions and getting rid of vaccine passports in the days and weeks ahead.

“Typically we’ve followed what the province is going to do, it has to be a really exceptional circumstance where we would maintain something that hte province isn’t doing.”

Starting Thursday, February 17th, capacity limits on places that require proof of vaccination will be lifted and social gathering limits will be increased to 25 people indoors and 100 outdoors.

March 1st, all capacity limits at indoor settings will be eliminated, along with proof of vaccination requirements.

Chatham-Kent Council agreed back in November, 2021 the municipal mask bylaw would expire once the provincial mandate was ended, but Premier Doug Ford said masking will remain in effect for a little while longer.