Today is the one-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 deaths at Northwood, which is why we published Stephanie Nolen's outstanding, heartbreaking investigation "What happened at Northwood?" this week. Unfortunately, that story isn't the only reminder of the risks of C19 in nursing homes: The province is reporting a new case today in "a staff member at Glasgow Hall, a long-term care home in Dartmouth," according to the daily C19 update.
"Most residents of this facility have been fully vaccinated with two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine," the update says. "As a precaution, residents are being isolated and cared for in their rooms and all residents and staff are being tested."
Both Nova Scotia premier Iain Rankin and chief medical officer of health Robert Strang address this case in the update.
“Our priority during the COVID-19 pandemic has been to protect our most vulnerable Nova Scotians,” says Rankin. “News of a case in a long-term care home is very troubling. Public health and the impacted facility are working quickly to make sure this is contained. While the vaccine rollout to all our long-term care facilities is almost complete, this is another reminder that COVID-19 is still here and we all need to be vigilant.”
Strang says: “We know the COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19 and thankfully almost all of the residents at Glasgow Hall have been fully vaccinated. Based on recent experience in Canada, I anticipate that the vaccine will prevent widespread transmission in this facility and that anyone who does contract the virus will only have mild symptoms.”
The infected long-term care worker is only one of the eight new C19 cases Nova Scotia is reporting today. "Five cases are in Eastern Zone. Three of them are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada, one is related to international travel, and one is a close contact of a previously reported case," says the province. According to our localizing table at the bottom of this post, all five patients are in the Sydney community health network
The Western zone has one new case—it's in the Lunenburg health network, tied to travel beyond the east coast—and the Central zone has two cases: the Glasgow Hall staffer and one person who travelled internationally. With eight new infections and six people recovering from the disease, Nova Scotia's active caseload rose for the first time in five days, to 44 active cases.
Because it's the weekend, vaccination numbers don't get reported, so we'll have to wait until Monday to find out if the province can keep up its recent average pace of more than 12,000 injections per day. But testing numbers are in for yesterday: Local labs completed 2,337 Nova Scotian tests, a bit more than the current daily average of 2,200.
And ending on a positive note, somebody has recovered sufficiently from their C19 infection to be released from hospital. Now only two coronavirus patients are hospitalized in the province.
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Saturday, April 17
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 1 new | 0 closed | 9 active |
| Yarmouth | - | - | - |
| Lunenburg | 1 | - | 2 |
| Wolfville | - | - | 7 |
| Central zone totals | 2 new | 4 closed | 22 active |
| West Hants | - | - | - |
| Halifax | 1 | 4 | 11 |
| Dartmouth | 1 | - | 6 |
| Bedford | - | - | 4 |
| Eastern Shore | - | - | - |
| Northern zone totals | 0 new | 2 closed | 0 active |
| Truro | - | 1 | - |
| Amherst | - | - | - |
| Pictou | - | 1 | - |
| Eastern zone totals | 5 new | 0 closed | 13 active |
| Antigonish | - | - | - |
| Inverness | - | - | 1 |
| Sydney | 5 | - | 12 |
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.
