COVID cases and news for Nova Scotia on Wednesday, Aug 11

NOTE: This day is now over. Click for the latest on COVID-19 from The Coast. Or for an informative look back at Nova Scotia's evolving pandemic response, keep on reading.

This is Canada's fourth wave

CBC published a story today quoting an expert who says: "We're absolutely in the fourth wave. There's no doubt about that." For a sense of what the data shows, here's The Coast's chart of Canadian cases, which we first published a couple weeks ago before the country was so clearly facing a fourth-wave rise in infections.

On Monday we pointed out that the average number of new cases in Canada had passed 1,000 per day. With today's new cases, Canada's now reached 1,500 cases per day (7-day moving average), the highest rate in a month, dating to July 10.

To find out which provinces and/or territories are leading the recent increase, click the place names at the top edge of the chart to turn that data on or off.

3 new cases and a rise to 19 active cases

Nova Scotia's COVID caseload reached it highest post-third-wave level today, with three new cases and just one recovery pushing the province up to 19 active cases. But it could be worse. All three cases are related to travel—no hint of uncontrolled community transmission—and only one COVID patient is in the hospital. As in recent days, that hospitalized person is in intensive care, so their C19 symptoms must be severe.

Two of the three cases announced Wednesday are in the Central health zone, says the province's daily disease report, and the other case is in Eastern zone. As usual, The Coast has further analyzed provincial data to locate the new infections more specifically within Nova Scotia's 14 community health networks, and our usual map and table reveal two unusual things about these cases.

First, the province doesn't know exactly where one of the patients lives. The pair of Central zone infections are split between the Halifax network and "Community not yet known," our term for when the public health tracking system doesn't have a postal code for the infected person and thus can't say what network they live in.

Second, the person being announced today as a new infection in the Eastern zone's Sydney/Glace Bay network is also being described as recovering from COVID today. We're not sure how that works medically—was this person sick for a couple weeks before going for a test, and somehow exhibited both proof of infection and complete recovery from infection?—and we've learned from disappointing experience that the province won't be forthcoming with an explanation, but we are sure that the numbers the province is reporting show one infection, one recovery and zero active cases today in Sydney/Glace Bay. (The last new case in Sydney/Glace Bay before this was July 12, basically a month ago, and the last active case was identified as recovered on July 23.)

In a third quirky tidbit from Coast analysis of those provincial numbers, all three of today's cases are males in the 20-to-39 age group. The province isn't saying if any of these guys have been vaccinated.

Speaking of vaccines, today's report says clinics across Nova Scotia delivered 3,151 jabs into arms yesterday, an extremely low number, although not as bad as the extraordinarily low 2,504 vaccinations reported yesterday. But yesterday's number included 553 people who got their first dose, while only 471 people got the first shot in today's number, so that's worse. As the vaccination chart below shows, according to the province's publicly reported data 76.79 percent of the population has at least one dose of vaccine, and 67.40 percent of the province is fully vaccinated. This is up, barely, from 76.74 and 67.13 percent yesterday.

Testing, however, is up a relatively large amount, from 2,239 completed tests reported yesterday to 3,072 tests today. The current average is around 2,800 tests per day; today is the first above-average day since last Saturday.

Periods, Pfizer and the pandemic

“Changes to the menstruation cycle as a result of the vaccine are not being tracked by the province at this time,” the government of Nova Scotia tells The Coast's Victoria Walton, perpetuating the patriarchy's longstanding disregard for people who have a uterus. But whether the province cares about it or not, a growing body of evidence—including stories from women in Halifax—shows that anti-COVID vaccines can mess with menstrual cycles. Click here to read Victoria's article, then you can share the information that the province isn't willing to.

This infographic was created by The Coast using daily case data from Nova Scotia's official COVID-19 dashboard. Our goal is for this to be the best NS COVID map around, clearer and more informative than the province or any other media organization provides. To get there we do an analysis of the data to find each day's new and resolved case numbers in the 14 community health networks, information the province does not provide. For a different but still highly accessible approach to the latest COVID statistics, check out our case table. Note: On July 23, 2021, Nova Scotia announced that it will no longer update case numbers on weekends.

jump back to the top

The Coast uses data logged from Nova Scotia's official COVID-19 dashboard in order to provide this tabulated breakdown. The province reports the number of active cases in each of Nova Scotia's 14 community health networks, but we do the math to be able to report the new and resolved case numbers. We also map the data to provide a different view of the case information. Note: Effective July 23, 2021, the province no longer updates case numbers on weekends.

jump back to the top

Nova Scotia's third wave of COVID grew in April, 2021, peaked in May (227 new cases in one day was the maximum) and subsided in June. On July 17, the province reached five active cases—its lowest level in more than eight months—and an election was called. So when it came time to reset The Coast's chart comparing daily new cases with that day’s active caseload, in order to better reflect disease levels after the third wave, we started from July 17. The dark line tracks the rise and fall of new infections reported by the province; the green area is the province's caseload. Click or hover over any point on the graph and the detail for that moment will pop up. To focus on just new or active cases, click the legend at the top left of the graph to hide or reveal that data set. Note: As of July 23, 2021, the province stopped updating case numbers on weekends. And you can click here for the version of this graph that includes the third wave and its May 10 crest of 1,655 active cases.

jump back to the top

How many Nova Scotians already have one dose of vaccine? How many are fully vaccinated with two doses? And how close are we to the herd immunity goal of 75 percent of the province fully vaxxed? These questions are answered in our chart of the vaccination rate in Nova Scotia since the province started reporting these numbers in January 2021, breaking out people who've had a single dose separate from those who've had the full complement of two doses. (Here's more information about the 75 percent target and what it will take to get there.) Note: The province doesn't update vaccination numbers on weekends.

jump back to the top

Click here for yesterday's COVID-19 news roundup, for August 10, 2021.