The Ford government is set to announce a provincewide, month-long stay-at-home order today along with a provincial state of emergency, similar to what was enacted in January in a bid to stem the third wave of COVID-19, multiple sources say.

Sources tell CP24 and CTV News Toronto that the order will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday and will close all retail outlets for in-person shopping other than grocery stores and pharmacies.

Big box stores will be allowed to open for sale of essential goods only.

All other retailers, including malls, will be restricted to curbside pickup.

The order is expected to last four weeks, meaning it could end on May 6.

The Ford cabinet met Tuesday afternoon to determine the restrictions, after Premier Ford said more must be done to quell the “inferno” of cases coming from Toronto, Peel and York regions.

Cabinet met again on Wednesday and approved the third state of emergency, which will allow the government to impose an enforceable stay-at-home order.

Speaking on Wednesday morning, Education Minister Stephen Lecce told CP24 the stay-at-home order will not require any public schools to close.

“It will not involve any closures of schools. It was our promise to keep schools open and to keep them safe.”

Public health officers in Toronto, Peel and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph have ordered all schools in those jurisdictions to close over the past two days.

The York Region District School Board also passed a motion Wednesday asking that region’s medical officer of health to allow them to move all classes online.

On Wednesday, 9.1 per cent of all known active cases of coronavirus infection involved students and staff at public schools.

Ontario’s daily COVID-19 case growth more than tripled through the month of March, leading to record-high hospital ICU occupancy of more than 500 by early April.

The province’s active caseload was above 26,000 on Tuesday. It has only ever exceeded 30,000 once, in early January.

Ontario reported 3,215 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest daily standalone count of cases reported since Jan. 17.

Infectious disease specialist and provincial vaccine task force member Dr. Isaac Bogoch said at the point the province is at, with unprecedented numbers of people requiring complex care in hospital, there aren’t a lot of options other than a stay-at-home order.

“As terrible as it was, it worked. We saw our cases peak and we had this plan implemented in January, and they plummeted throughout the month of January,” he told CP24.

“Anything resembling that is probably going to be very effective. You need, sadly, at this point, a very blunt tool because your case numbers are so high, your health-care system is really being stretched beyond capacity, and you don’t have many other options available to you when you are in a state like this.”

The third wave of infection was driven primarily by a more transmissible and deadly variant of coronavirus known as B.1.1.7.

First discovered in southwestern England in Sept. 2020, it now makes up at least two thirds of all new cases in Ontario, according to epidemiologists.

It is believed to be at least 60 per cent more deadly than earlier wild strains of the virus circulating in Ontario.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said he supported a stay-at-home order, but wanted to see a narrower list of businesses considered essential.

“I absolutely support the closure of some non-essential stores. I looked at the essential list and it’s been so vast that during many of the lockdowns there were so many factories that were exempt that the majority of our workforce was still going to work,” he said of the January shutdown period.

During Ontario’s previous stay-at-home order, all work an employer could not justify as essential was to be performed by employees at home, and people were asked not to travel to other jurisdictions overnight or gather outdoors or indoors with members of a different household.

Ford, Health Minister Christine Elliott, Solicitor General Sylvia Jones and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams are set to speak about the order on Wednesday at 2 p.m. from Queen’s Park.

— With files from CTV News’ Colin D’Mello and CP24’s Cristina Tenaglia

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