Quebec had the virus under control, now its biggest cities are under new lockdown measures
A little over a month ago, Health Minister Christian Dubé congratulated Quebecers for their hard work at containing the spread of the coronavirus.
It was a Tuesday, Aug. 25, and the province had registered just 94 new cases of COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours.
"We have really succeeded at controlling the transmission of COVID," Dubé said at a news conference in Montreal.
It was a statement of fact, but the ground had already started to shift. In the weeks that followed, transmission increased. At first it grew slowly, then exponentially.
On Monday, the government implicitly acknowledged it has again lost control of the virus. The province is reimposing lockdown measures on Quebec's two biggest cities, starting Oct. 1.