Legault Hinted At When Officials Will Decide To Lift The Curfew

At a press conference on Wednesday, Premier François Legault announced an expansion of the orange COVID-19 zone to five of the province's regions and promised to present a plan to gradually reopen sports. As for Quebec's curfew, the premier suggested the situation is a bit more complex.

Officials' considerations about the curfew, he said, will depend on a number of factors, including "the evolution of the [COVID-19 virus] variant and the effects of March break in the days ahead."

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Is there a timeline for the lifting of Quebec's curfew?

No. Legault did state that he imagines lifting curfew when "vulnerable people" have received their COVID-19 vaccines, but he did not provide a timeline.

At the time of writing, most regions are only accepting appointments for vaccine doses from people aged 80 and up.

In Montreal, Laval and the Côte-Nord, the age is 70.

"It's difficult to predict exactly where we'll be. We know we have a few difficult weeks ahead of us," Legault said, later adding that this period of difficulty could last two to four weeks.

What are the curfew hours across Quebec?

Quebec's 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew first went into effect on January 9 for what was supposed to be a period of four weeks.

In orange zones, officials later pushed curfew back to 9:30 p.m.

As of March 8, only the regions of Montreal, Laval, Montérégie, Lanaudière and the Laurentides will still be in a red zone.