The same day Nova Scotia announced the good news of expanded vaccine eligibly, it also announced case numbers that suggest a viral surge. The race is truly on to find out if we can spread vaccine protection faster than the virus can spread itself.
There are 15 new COVID-19 cases in Nova Scotia on Monday, the most in one day since the 15 cases announced December 4, when the province was in the middle of fighting the pandemic's second wave. And with just a single person recovering, the caseload jumped up to 63 active cases; that's another second-wave mark, the highest since the 65 active cases on December 11.
Despite these high numbers, only two C19 patients are in hospital, and most of the fresh infections are connected to travel or previous cases. "Six cases are in Eastern Zone. One is a close contact of a previously reported case and the others are related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada," says the province's daily report. "One case is in Western Zone and is related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada"
The eight cases in Central break down as four contacts of other patients, one tied to travel beyond the east coast and three "under investigation" as potential community spread. (The two elementary school cases announced last night are a close contact—at South Woodside elementary—and an under investigation, at St. Joseph’s-Alexander McKay. They are being counted in the province's tally, and on our map and locating table, for the first time today.)
In other standard C19 statistics from the province: NS labs processed 1,950 local tests yesterday, below the current average of 2,200 daily tests. And there were 12,771 people vaccinated on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, an average of about 4,250 tests per day on the weekend, which is far, far below the pace of over 12,000 tests per day Nova Scotia averaged through the middle of last week.
But today's big news is the number and range of the new cases. According to our table, below, which puts information from the province's C19 data dashboard into compact form, fully half of Nova Scotia's community health networks have new cases today.
The Northern health zone—made up of the Truro, Amherst and Pictou health networks—is completely clear of COVID. The Western zone has a new case in just one of its three networks (that one is Lunenburg). Eastern zone, however, has cases in two out of three networks (Inverness and Sydney have cases), and Central zone has infections in four of five networks, as only Eastern Shore is case-free today.
Even the Central zone's West Hants network has a case, and it had been the only network without an infection since the province started giving stats at the network level on January 20. Now the virus has come to all of the province's 14 networks in 2021, and we nervously wait to see where it goes tomorrow.
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Monday, April 19
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 1 new | 0 closed | 8 active |
| Yarmouth | - | - | - |
| Lunenburg | 1 | - | 3 |
| Wolfville | - | - | 5 |
| Central zone totals | 8 new | 0 closed | 34 active |
| West Hants | 1 | - | 1 |
| Halifax | 3 | - | 15 |
| Dartmouth | 3 | - | 10 |
| Bedford | 1 | - | 7 |
| Eastern Shore | - | - | - |
| Northern zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 0 active |
| Truro | - | - | - |
| Amherst | - | - | - |
| Pictou | - | - | - |
| Eastern zone totals | 6 new | 1 closed | 21 active |
| Antigonish | - | - | 1 |
| Inverness | 1 | - | 2 |
| Sydney | 5 | 1 | 18 |
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.