The province is reporting 133 new cases on Sunday. Although this is a drop from the one-day record high of 148 cases announced Saturday, new infections are spread more widely across the province today: According to our location table at the bottom of this post, 10 of Nova Scotia's 14 community health networks have new cases today, compared to seven networks with fresh cases yesterday.
Twenty-four people who had COVID-19 have recovered from the disease since the last report, but with the 133 new infections the caseload has risen to a new pandemic record for the fifth day in a row; currently Nova Scotia has 822 active cases. There are now 34 people in the hospital, including six patients whose COVID symptoms are severe enough that they require intensive care. That's an increase from the 30 hospitalizations and five ICU patients reported Saturday.
The province is not reporting any new infections from staff or residents at long-term care facilities. Yesterday two residents at Clarmar Residential Care Facility in Dartmouth were announced as positive. Since November, the province's plan in case of COVID among nursing home residents has been to send the residents to special Regional Care Units for treatment, with the RCU for the Halifax area being at Ocean View Continuing Care Centre. The Coast asked the province if the two Clarmar residents have been moved to Ocean View; we still haven't received an answer and today's report doesn't mention their status.
Speaking of questions without answers, some of the positive cases reported on Saturday and Sunday are almost certainly from labs working through the backlog of 45,000 tests that was revealed on Friday. However, the province hasn't provided any details. It has not said how many of the cases announced over the weekend are "new" from testing the day before, and how many are "newly confirmed" out of the backlog of swabs taken last week. There were 15,832 tests processed yesterday by Nova Scotia's labs, down from the single-day high of over 16,500 completed tests reported yesterday.
"There are 117 cases in Central Zone, nine cases in Eastern Zone, one case in Northern Zone and six cases in Western Zone," says the Sunday provincial report. "There is community spread in Central Zone. The Eastern, Northern and Western Zones continue to be closely monitored for community spread."
Nova Scotia is now on day five on the latest lockdown restrictions, plus the weekend case counts are high, so Strankin clearly feels it's time for a pep talk. “I know it is tough to follow the restrictions, but Nova Scotians are known for doing what is needed, no matter how hard it is," says top doc Robert Strang in the province's update. "Follow the restrictions, and we will get through this difficult period sooner.”
For his part, premier Iain Rankin addresses the high numbers head-on in his quote from the update. “We can’t get distracted by the case counts or feel disheartened by them—we’ve hunkered down before and stopped the spread, and we will do it again.”
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Sunday, May 2
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 6 new | 0 closed | 24 active |
| Yarmouth | - | - | 5 |
| Lunenburg | 3 | - | 9 |
| Wolfville | 3 | - | 10 |
| Central zone totals | 117 new | 22 closed | 714 active |
| West Hants | 1 | - | 5 |
| Halifax | 44 | 4 | 246 |
| Dartmouth | 40 | 12 | 303 |
| Bedford | 14 | 1 | 57 |
| Eastern Shore | 3 | - | 22 |
| Northern zone totals | 1 new | 1 closed | 17 active |
| Truro | 1 | 1 | 10 |
| Amherst | - | - | - |
| Pictou | - | - | 7 |
| Eastern zone totals | 9 new | 1 closed | 67 active |
| Antigonish | - | - | 1 |
| Inverness | 1 | - | 12 |
| Sydney | 8 | 1 | 54 |
TABLE NOTES The totals for the health zones (Northern, Eastern, Western, Central) may be different than the totals you'd get by adding up the numbers in the Community Health Networks that make up each zone. The zone totals reflect every case in the area, while the community network numbers only show cases that can be localized with the patient's postal code to a region inside the bigger area. Because case information may be updated by the province after cases are announced, two things that lead to different totals are common: 1. the province never gets the information to track some case(s) at the community network level, usually leading to a higher number of cases in the zone total than the sum of the networks, and 2. a case may appear in the network day(s) after it was announced when a case that didn't have a postal code receives one, usually leading to a lower number of cases in the zone total than the sum of the networks. The names of the community networks here have been adapted/shortened for simplicity (click to download the province's PDF map with the exhaustively complete network names). All data comes from the Nova Scotia COVID-19 data page. We use a dash (-) instead of a zero (0) where applicable in the health network numbers to make the table easier to read.