Yesterday the province set a new record for daily infections with 66, closed public schools in Halifax and put new limits on retail and restaurants in the rest of Nova Scotia. Yesterday was just a warm-up act.
Today the province is reporting 96 new cases. That's the most in Nova Scotia in one day by a large margin, and the second-highest daily count any province in Atlantic Canada has witnessed during the pandemic (after Newfoundland and Labrador's 100 cases last February 11).
Today the province has more than doubled the number of people in hospital, jumping from 5 in yesterday's report to 11 today. One more person has gone into intensive case since yesterday, for a total of three patients in the ICU. Nobody recovered since yesterday, so the number of active cases rises by 96 to 419 active cases; not the April 19, 2020 record of 466 active cases, but at this rate that mark isn't far off.
Today premier Iain Rankin and chief medical officer of health Robert Strang locked down the entire province. What exactly does that look like? First, take the lockdown that Halifax has been under for the last five days and apply it to everyone in every place in the province. Second, make that lockdown even more restrictive: Reduce the gathering limit from any five people to just the people in a household, don't let shoppers into most retail businesses, make children aged two and up wear masks in daycare, stop in-person classroom teaching at all public and private schools. The Coast has the full list. The province-wide lockdown comes into effect tomorrow, Wednesday, April 28 at 8am. It will last until at least May 12, two weeks away.
Today's new cases are spread out as 90 cases in the Central health authority zone, three in Eastern, two Western and one Northern. The province is so taxed—understandably—by the current outbreak that it's not giving much description about the new cases and their transmission vectors. When you have 96 cases, you know there's community spread in the Central zone and genetic testing tells you the B117 variant is in the province, you don't need a lot of detail to know the situation is bad. That said, today's provincial report does have an ominous note about the disease's spread into long-term care: "One of the cases in Central Zone is a staff member at Clarmar Residential Care Facility, a residential care home in Dartmouth. All residents have been fully vaccinated with two doses of COVID-19 vaccine."
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Tuesday, April 27
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 2 new | 0 closed | 14 active |
| Yarmouth | - | - | 4 |
| Lunenburg | - | - | 3 |
| Wolfville | 2 | - | 7 |
| Central zone totals | 90 new | 0 closed | 356 active |
| West Hants | - | - | 3 |
| Halifax | 28 | - | 119 |
| Dartmouth | 39 | - | 164 |
| Bedford | 9 | - | 24 |
| Eastern Shore | 4 | - | 10 |
| Northern zone totals | 1 new | 0 closed | 13 active |
| Truro | - | - | 6 |
| Amherst | - | - | - |
| Pictou | 1 | - | 7 |
| Eastern zone totals | 3 new | 0 closed | 36 active |
| Antigonish | - | - | 1 |
| Inverness | - | - | 1 |
| Sydney | 3 | - | 34 |
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.
