COVID cases and news for Nova Scotia on Tuesday, Dec 28

Going into the holidays, Nova Scotia is overwhelmed by COVID and its data-dissemination abilities are severely compromised. For the time being, the only infographic we can share with any confidence of accuracy is: Canada’s fourth wave

Extending school break

Nova Scotia’s omicron-powered COVID outbreak means a little extra time off for students in public schools. “The holiday break for students will be extended with students returning to class on Monday, January 10 and teachers and other school staff returning Tuesday, January 4,” the province is announcing today.

“COVID-19 is generally a mild disease for children,” says NS top doc Robert Strang in the announcement press release. “We need to balance the risk of spread in schools with the significant harms that come from not being in school and learning at home. Schools will have layers of protection in place that will help minimize spread and keep students and staff safe in school.”

The province says those layers of protection will include:

strict cohorting
no large assemblies, gatherings or events
no non-essential visitors
reminding families to keep students home when they’re sick
proper mask wearing
continuation of regular hand hygiene and enhanced cleaning
using the community rules for sports, which currently say no games are allowed, and practise can only involve a maximum of 10 people indoors
advising students to wear the 3-ply cloth masks that were distributed at the start of the school year, because thinner masks “do not offer significant protection.”

561 new cases

And suddenly we’re back on the COVID rollercoaster, where cases are up one day and down the next. After 581 cases yesterday, Nova Scotia is today reporting 561 infections. They are spread across the province, with 430 in Central zone, 54 new cases in Eastern, 39 in Northern and 38 cases in Western zone.

The province is also announcing another infection connected to yesterday’s hospital outbreak. “The Nova Scotia Health Authority is reporting one additional case related to an outbreak at a ward at the Halifax Infirmary site of the QEII Health Sciences Centre,” says the province. “There are now six patients who have tested positive. All patients are being closely monitored and other infection prevention and control measures are in place. Staff testing is underway.”

As we’ve been saying lately, over the holidays Nova Scotia isn’t reporting a whole lot beyond new cases and their general locations. Today should be the last of what the province calls an abbreviated COVID-19 news release before the data dashboard is updated on tomorrow. Because the dashboard is due back so soon, and because with thousands of people infected lately there are are probably hundreds of people recovering every day, we will not confuse things by redeploying our estimate of active cases. We’ll bring back as many charts as possible on Wednesday.

Canadian cases in 2021

There was a point in July 2021, when the delta variant was causing an increase in COVID infections around the world, that Canada seemed safe from the fourth wave. By August, however, that point had passed, and case numbers around the country started to rise again. This graph charts the number of new infections every day in each province and territory, using the 7-day moving average to mitigate single-day anomalies (including a lack of weekend reporting in several jurisdictions including British Columbia and Nova Scotia). To focus on individual places, click the place names at the top of the chart to turn that data on or off.

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Click here for the previous COVID-19 news roundup, for December 27, 2021.