After four days in a row of more coronavirus infections in Nova Scotia than patients recovering, the humans are fighting back. Today's daily COVID-19 update is announcing three new cases, but there are five recoveries. This is the first win for the humans in April, and with any luck it won't be the last. There are now 32 active cases in the province, with one of those patients in the hospital.
The three new cases are in the Central health zone says the province (two in the Halifax community health network, one in Dartmouth says our table below), and they reflect three different disease vectors. "One is related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada," the update says. "One is a close contact of a previously reported case. One is under investigation."
That "under investigation" terminology never stops sucking. But so far this year, every investigation of curious cases has not discovered uncontrolled community transmission, and that's a streak nobody needs broken.
Speaking of sucking, with the weekend over the latest vaccination numbers are out today. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, clinics around the province delivered just 2,068 doses of vaccine, or about 700 vaccines per day. As a recent comparison, last Tuesday nearly 6,500 people got jabs. That's 700 per day versus 6,500 in a day, different orders of magnitude for Nova Scotia's vaccine rollout.
Vaccinations always slump on Saturdays and Sundays (we're working on a story about why). This Friday added to the slump because it was the Good Friday national holiday, and clearly the province decided it should be one of those "everybody just go relax" kind of holidays, rather than a "people aren't working so this is an ideal time for them to get vaccinated" pandemic-style holiday.
That's one approach, for sure, although it's not our foe's style. The virus's demonstrated contempt for human limitations like schedules and national borders continued unabated over the long weekend, if a BBC headline like "Covid pandemic peaks in Eastern and Central Europe and ruins Easter" is remotely accurate.
The holiday weekend saw a peak in C19 testing apathy among Nova Scotians, if the latest stats from the province are remotely accurate at reflecting motivation. Sunday's reported number was low, about half the recent daily average rate of C19 tests, but Monday's number is even lower, just 1,212 tests processed by local labs yesterday. (The current average is nearly 2,800 tests per day.)
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Monday, April 5
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 12 active |
| Yarmouth | - | - | 1 |
| Lunenburg | - | - | 6 |
| Wolfville | - | - | 5 |
| Central zone totals | 3 new | 5 closed | 16 active |
| West Hants | - | - | - |
| Halifax | 2 | 2 | 10 |
| Dartmouth | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Bedford | - | 1 | - |
| Eastern Shore | - | - | 2 |
| Northern zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 1 active |
| Truro | - | - | 1 |
| Amherst | - | - | - |
| Pictou | - | - | - |
| Eastern zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 3 active |
| Antigonish | - | - | - |
| Inverness | - | - | 2 |
| Sydney | - | - | 1 |
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, because the province doesn't track all cases at the community network level. The zone totals reflect every case in the area; the community network numbers only show cases that can be localized to a region inside the bigger area. 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.
