Nova Scotia is reporting six new COVID-19 infections on this good news/bad news Sunday.
The bad news starts with those six fresh cases. It's been more than two weeks since the province has seen so many cases in a day, dating back to the six cases on Saturday, March 6.
"Four of the cases are in Central Zone. Three of the cases are close contacts of previously reported cases and the other case is related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada. The person is self-isolating, as required," says today's report to media. "Two of the cases are in Eastern Zone. Both cases are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada and are self-isolating, as required."
The case location table below shows where the new patients live inside the larger health zones. Of the four Central cases, two are in the Halifax community health network, one is in Dartmouth and one is in Bedford. Both of the Eastern zone cases are in the Inverness network, which covers all of Cape Breton except for the area around Sydney. Dartmouth's had at least one new case every day since Friday; the last case in Inverness was March 6.
For the last three days, the new case count across the province has matched the number of patients whose C19 case has been resolved, and Nova Scotia's stayed steady at 17 active cases. But today there are only two recoveries, both in the Western zone's Wolfville health network, compared to six new cases, so the number of currently active cases in Nova Scotia climbed to 21. That number hasn't been above 20 since Wednesday, March 10.
Ready for the good news?
As of today, the Northern health zone—made up of the Truro, Amherst and Pictou networks—hasn't had a single case in more than two weeks. (The Amherst network had a new case Saturday, March 6.) The accepted incubation period for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is 14 days, so at this point it's safe to say none of the previous Northern zone patients passed the bug on to anyone else. In other words, this zone is currently free of C19, and has graduated to the green colour on our map at the top of the page.
If we were top doc Robert Strang, we'd feel obligated to point out that that excellent status can easily change. As fate would have it, the Eastern zone was ready to go green today, too, expect for those two cases. But we're not Strang, and this is the good news part of the report, so we'll move on.
Although six cases is a lot of cases, none of them are "under investigation" as possible community spread. They're all either travel-related or close contacts of previous cases. Which is great news—as long as these patients don't end up infecting their close contacts, creating more new cases to spread on to more close contacts.
Finally, nobody is in the hospital because of C19. That's always a relief. Nova Scotia's had three days in a row hospitals free of C19 patients, and if the streak continues tomorrow that will be another bit of good news no matter how many new cases there are.
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Sunday, March 21
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 0 new | 2 closed | 4 active |
| Yarmouth | - | - | - |
| Lunenburg | - | - | - |
| Wolfville | - | 2 | 4 |
| Central zone totals | 4 new | 0 closed | 15 active |
| West Hants | - | - | - |
| Halifax | 2 | - | 5 |
| Dartmouth | 1 | - | 7 |
| Bedford | 1 | - | 3 |
| Eastern Shore | - | - | - |
| Northern zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 0 active |
| Truro | - | - | - |
| Amherst | - | - | - |
| Pictou | - | - | - |
| Eastern zone totals | 2 new | 0 closed | 2 active |
| Antigonish | - | - | - |
| Inverness | 2 | - | 2 |
| Sydney | - | - | - |
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, because the province doesn't track all cases at the community network level. The zone totals reflect every case in the area; the community network numbers only show cases that can be localized to a region inside the bigger area. 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.
