Montreal and Quebec City will be upgraded to red alert 'in coming days', says Dub

Montreal and Quebec City will be upgraded to the highest COVID-19 alert level "in the coming days" according to provincial Health MinisterChristian Dub.

He confirmed the two cities would move from orange to red alert while speaking on Radio-Canada's popular Sunday night talk show,Tout le monde en parle.

"Montreal and Quebec City are the hardest hit areas at the moment. They're very close to the red zone," he said. "We're going to announce in the coming days because I think we've arrived at that point. We're there and we have to act because people are expecting us to be transparent."

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Dubsaid that difficult decisions lie ahead but didn't give details on exactly what the red zone restrictions would look like.

The number of COVID-19 infections in the provincecontinues to surge, with Quebec reporting 896 new cases on Sunday.

The island of Montreal has the most new casesat 375. The Quebec City area has 120new cases and theMontrgie has 83 new cases.

Dub and public health officials have been calling on people to stop socializing for the next month in order to slow the spread of the virus.