Nova Scotia moved into Phase 4 on Wednesday, on schedule, as planned. But according to the provincial data dashboard, maybe we shouldn’t have.
On Thursday, the dashboard still sits at 74.3 percent of the population having at least one dose of vaccine (reporting numbers as of the end of Wednesday), short of the 75 percent Phase 4 target. But that’s because thousands of vaccinated people haven’t been entered into the province’s system yet.
“There are 8,000 Canadian Armed Forces that live and work in Nova Scotia,” said chief medical officer of health Robert Strang at the provincial COVID briefing Wednesday. “For privacy and data sharing reasons, we can’t incorporate their individual level data so it appears in the Nova Scotia data.”
The military numbers were first mentioned to the public last Wednesday, around the time people started realizing we needed a miracle to get to 75 percent on time. And if that miracle is the Department of National Defence, apparently Nova Scotia will take it.
“We absolutely know that there are a roughly another one percent of Nova Scotians who’ve had two doses of vaccine,” Strang said. “We just can’t incorporate them. So we are very comfortable and confident we are at that 75 percent target.”
The province confirmed to The Coast via email that “the work is underway” to add the military personnel to the grand total on the province’s data dashboard. Adding 8,000 people will raise the province’s vaccination rate by .82 percent.
The following chart has three different scenarios. The line labelled “Reported” is the actual number being reported by the province, which is 74.3 percent vaccinated through Wednesday’s vaccinations. “Projected” extends the actual number at the current rate of first-dose uptake, projecting to pass the 75 percent target next Wednesday, July 21. The third scenario takes the reported number and adds 8,000 people; this “+ 8,000 military” line had Nova Scotia reaching 75 percent on Tuesday.
But no matter what the dashboard or Strang says about reaching the target of 75 percent of Nova Scotians having at least one dose of vaccine, we can’t stop there. “Until 75 percent of our population has two doses of vaccine, we will not be able to move beyond Phase 4,” said Strang.
The top doc expects Phase 5 to happen around the end of August at this point, but it still largely depends on who moves up their second dose.
“Given what we expect to get vaccine supply in the coming weeks and anticipating appointments for all that vaccine will be filled,” he said. “We’re still on target, we certainly should reach Phase 5 by end of August, end of summer. If things change, it may be slower, but if we get even better uptake from Nova Scotians we may be able to go sooner than that.”
