NL Back to Alert Level 5

The entire province is back to Alert Level 5 after it was announced by Dr. Fitegerald on Friday evening that the outbreak in the St. John's metro region is the UK variant (B117).

On Friday Newfoundland and Labrador reported 50 new cases of COVID-19. There are now 260 active cases.

47 are located in Eastern Health and three are in Central Health. 1,560 people have been tested since yesterday. 87,447 people have been tested in total.

Bruce Chaulk says that the election will now shift to voting by mail, using Special Ballots.

The application deadline is extended to Monday, February 15 at 8:00 p.m.

Completed voting kits must be returned to Elections NL on or before Monday, March 1.

As of 20 December 2020, Public Health in England confirmed there is "no evidence" to suggest that the new variant would be resistant to the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine. Mutations in SARS-CoV-2 are common: over 4,000 mutations have been detected in its spike protein alone, according to the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium.