guideline confusion: are you 'bubbling' or 'social circling'?

in canada, only a handful of provinces so far have allowed two-household gatherings. new brunswick was the first province in late april to allow “double bubbles” and newfoundland and labrador followed a week later. in mid-may, nova scotia started exploring two-family “bubbles .” no new cases have emerged yet from “double bubbling.”

on friday, ontario premier doug ford announced ontario would also allow expanded households, except he had a different term for the concept: “ social circles .”

these “ social circles ” allow expanding your household to include 10 people, ontario doesn’t specify the number of households that can be “bubbled” up, only that the number of people total doesn’t exceed 10 people. and all 10 people agree to be exclusive to each other.

“i think in general, [double bubbling] is a good concept,” says ashleigh tuite , an infectious disease epidemiologist and math modeller at the dalla lana school of public health. “covid likes large groups of people. larger gatherings is where we see a lot of transmission happening.”

double bubble comes with double risk

double bubbling is better than relaxing group gatherings

double bubbling isn’t as clean-cut for different households

person, place, time and space

the level of risk in your double bubble depends on four different factors, says tuite, who credits a colleague with the concept: person, place, time, and space. for ‘person,’ think about who you will be interacting with, whether it’s a healthcare worker who is more likely to be infected or someone who is older and more vulnerable to infection.