EASTERN ONTARIO — The dentist’s chair is now OK, but the salon chair remains forbidden territory. And it will only be “toward the end of summer” before increasingly shaggy Ontarians return to their barbers and hair stylists for a cut, suggests Eastern Ontario Medical Officer of Health Dr. Paul Roumeliotis.
Dr. Roumeliotis, member of the provincial COVID-19 roundtable setting pandemic policy for the whole of Ontario, made the admission during his most recent daily media briefing, yesterday evening.
“As a matter of fact, I was talking about that today at the provincial level,” said the doctor of barbershops, hair salons and other personal service settings. On the reopening of those establishments, he added, “We’re looking at it at kind of the third stage, so when you’re talking about a month between stages … it’s more toward the end of summer.”
Dr. Roumeliotis credited his daughter with his own recent haircut — achieved, he said, through the use of dog clippers. (His daughter, he also clarified the next day, is a member of his household.)
NVN asked the doctor to explain the logic in allowing the recent reopening of dental practices, which he acknowledged involves activity aerosolizing potentially infected saliva, while even the smallest hair salons with only one chair must stay shut?
“It’s not my logic, it’s provincial direction,” the Medical Officer of Health replied, then clarifying, “The logic is we want medical services to start first. I think that’s the logic, and dentists happen to fall in there, with ‘physio’ and everything else.”
See Dr. Roumeliotis’s May 28 media briefing, below.
See Dr. Roumeliotis’s May 29 media briefing, below.