Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tested negative for COVID-19 following his return from the G7 leaders summit in the U.K. over the weekend, and is now allowed to leave hotel quarantine.
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed on Wednesday morning that Trudeau is free to leave the Ottawa hotel where he and the Canadian G7 delegation had been in quarantine since returning from the summit on Tuesday morning.
He has not yet left but is expected to do so shortly to continue quarantine at home.
READ MORE: Trudeau will do COVID-19 hotel quarantine after G7 meetings in U.K.
While non-essential foreign nationals remained banned from travelling to Canada, Canadian travellers who return home from abroad are limited to arriving at only a handful of major airports: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.
Those airports are the sites of government-authorized quarantine hotels where travellers must stay until they produce a negative COVID-19 PCR test, at which point they can continue their 14-day quarantine at home. Travellers who refuse to do the hotel quarantine are issued a $5,000 fine.
READ MORE: COVID-19 travel rules could be relaxed for ‘fully vaccinated’ Canadians: Trudeau
Trudeau’s office said prior to the trip that he and the Canadian delegation, including journalists, would be staying at an Ottawa hotel in quarantine when they came home.
Ottawa does not have official government-authorized quarantine hotels because the city is not part of the international arrivals scheme, but the government aircraft are based at the Ottawa airport.
The program has faced questions in recent weeks about whether it is working as intended, and a federal advisory panel recommended the requirement for a hotel quarantine be ended in May.
Trudeau said last week the rules around quarantine and COVID-19 restrictions for fully vaccinated Canadians could ease in the coming weeks as case counts drop.
No specific details of those plans have yet been announced.
— with files from Global’s Abigail Bimman
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