Shortcut to data visualizations Cases 2023 Deaths 2023 Hospitalizations 2023 Pandemic infections Weekly deaths Pandemic patients Death toll The omicron variant arrived in Nova Scotia at the end of 2021—Dec. 8 by the province’s official count—making 2022 the first full year of the omicron COVID pandemic. 2023 will be the second, unless either the disease […]
COVID-19
News updates and questions answered what you need to know about coronavirus COVID-19 virus pandemic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
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The COVID emergency is officially over in Nova Scotia
In the early months of the COVID crisis, Dr. Robert Strang’s daily briefings were a popular and vital source of information for Nova Scotians. Today, Dr. Strang gave his final briefing of the epidemic, announcing the lifting of the province’s last lingering COVID restrictions and stating that COVID’s become an endemic disease akin to the […]
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Nova Scotia reaches 800 deaths on quiet COVID anniversary
Nova Scotia’s very first cases of COVID-19 were announced Sunday, March 15, 2020. The province’s newest weekly disease numbers were released at the data dashboard Thursday, March 9, 2023, making it the last pandemic report before the three-year COVID anniversary. So what is the pandemic news three years in? Pretty darn good, actually. There were four COVID […]
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Province blames record COVID death count on “a lag in reporting”
COVID hasn’t given many surprises lately in Nova Scotia. An outbreak of Kraken subvariant infections, which seemed to be an imminent threat at the start of 2023, thankfully hasn’t happened. There was an increase in new cases around the December holiday season, then cases stabilized to about 650 per week. The number of people admitted […]
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Year 4 of COVID starts under a Kraken cloud
Update Jan. 6: Nova Scotia has had two confirmed cases of the Kraken variant, the province tells The Coast, so this story has been changed to reflect that. To recap: 2020 introduced COVID-19 to a world of humans who had no immunity to the virus. 2021 brought vaccines to help humanity gain immunity without infection. […]
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Nova Scotian COVID in 2022: Deaths, cases and hospitalizations
Note: After weekly updates throughout 2022, this page is no longer being updated. The following charts are a record of Nova Scotia’s COVID activity for the year; for the latest numbers in 2023 go to this page. In the beginning—Nova Scotia’s first cases of COVID-19 were reported on March 15, 2020—the province was diligent about […]
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Making sense of this nonsensical COVID year
Thinking back, way back through the thick mists of pandemic time, at the start of 2022 everything about COVID made sense. Nova Scotia was in the middle of a tidal wave of omicron cases—there were more infections reported in the first week and a half of January (8,996) than in the first year and a […]
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A year into omicron, Dr. Strang wants to talk flu
According to the province’s count, we are currently in the seventh wave of COVID infections. The first started March 1, 2020, with the earliest known cases in Nova Scotia announced March 15. The pandemic’s omicron era arrived in Nova Scotia on December 8, 2021, making Thursday the first omicronniversary. It’s been a year marked by […]
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How rising hospital admissions hint at a COVID surge in Nova Scotia
Update December 8: The new provincial COVID numbers came out today, and cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all back down. To find out more about the threat of a winter surge, we got on the phone with Dr. Robert Strang, who thinks Nova Scotia is in a good place right now with the disease. “What […]
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“There will be some people that die from COVID”
Monday morning at 8:30, the province sent an email to media organizations advising that Dr. Robert Strang would be holding a virtual press conference at 1pm “to answer questions about COVID-19.” My first thought was that Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health wanted to talk about the BA4 and BA5 virus variants that are […]
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We’ve never had a deadlier COVID week and Tim Houston doesn’t seem to care
The deadliest, and most confusing, phase of Nova Scotia’s pandemic began two months ago on March 21, the day premier Tim Houston removed almost all public health restrictions around masking, distancing and gathering. This was Houston’s “Mission accomplished” moment, acting as if COVID was over and we could finally get back to normal, even though […]
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Nova Scotia’s deadliest pandemic phase continues even as COVID numbers drop
Cherished reader, we owe you an apology. Last week, after the province’s May 5 COVID numbers came out, we wrote a report about them for The Coast Daily newsletter but didn’t publish any information here at thecoast.ca. One moral to this story is that you should subscribe to the Daily to make sure you get […]