NOTE: This day is now over. Click for the latest on COVID-19 from The Coast. Or for an informative look back at Nova Scotia's evolving pandemic response, keep on reading.
Map of NS community health networks Table of community networks New and active cases Vaccination rate Canada’s fourth wave NS breakthrough infections
New Brunswick passes Nova Scotia in total cases
Almost two years ago, near the start of the pandemic, Nova Scotia had the distinction of being the last province in Canada with any diagnosed cases of COVID-19. New Brunswick, meanwhile, was the first Atlantic Canadian province to report a case. So there was one week—from March 11 through March 17, 2020—when New Brunswick, with its population of not-quite 800,000, had more cases than Nova Scotia and its population of nearly one million people.
That switched on Wednesday, March 18, 2020, when Nova Scotia had reached 12 total cases and New Brunswick was at 11, and NS kept the lead for the next 20 months.
There was a moment last April 18, with Nova Scotia at 1,807 cases and New Brunswick at 1,788 cases, that NB threatened to overtake the bigger province. There were only 19 cases difference between them, as shown on this graph.
Then the COVID third wave hit Nova Scotia hard, and just a few weeks later—on May 10—Nova Scotia had over 2,000 cases more than its smaller neighbour. In July 2021, the COVID gap would reach its maximum, NS having 3,534 cases more than NB.
But then the gap started to slowly close, as the pandemic's fourth wave arrived and took hold on the east coast. Last Saturday, Nov 27, New Brunswick reached 8,172 cases during the pandemic, passing Nova Scotia and its 8,169 reported infections. NS has stopped reporting new cases on the weekend, however, so we wanted to wait until today's numbers came out and any weekend reporting lag settled out before calling attention to the situation. The Tuesday numbers maintain the change that happened Saturday: New Brunswick now has 8,318 COVID cases during the pandemic, 30 more than Nova Scotia and its 8,288 cases.
NS vax mandate update
Today is the last day for Nova Scotia government employees to prove they've been vaccinated—starting Wednesday, Dec 1, the unvaxxed go on unpaid leave. The province announced its latest vax numbers today, and Lyndsay Armstrong has the story on which sectors of the public service are going to be most effected by the vaccination mandate.
A jump to 61 new cases
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Reopening status
Phase 5 (more or less)
New cases
61
New recoveries
31
New deaths
0
Active cases
200
Total cases in Nova Scotia during pandemic
8,288
Total COVID deaths
110
Yesterday there were 59 new cases, today there are 61. Doesn't sound like a big difference, does it?
But yesterday the province was reporting for cases diagnosed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and 59 cases in three days is just about 20 new infections per day on average. Today's provincial COVID report covers cases diagnosed just on Monday—for 61 cases in one day. And there hasn't been a single day with more new cases since the 66 cases announced September 14, the day health minister Michelle Thompson announced the fourth wave of COVID infections was definitely in Nova Scotia.
Which makes 61 cases today kind of a big deal.
Back on September 14, there were 173 active cases and four COVID patients in hospital, none of them in the ICU. Today there are 200 active cases and 13 hospitalizations, with four of those patients sick enough to be in intensive care.
Strangely, on Sep 15, the day after Thompson raised the fourth-wave alarm, Nova Scotia reported just six new cases. Here's hoping for a similar drop in tomorrow's report, after today's recent high.
Map of cases in community health networks
This infographic was created by The Coast using daily case data from Nova Scotia's official COVID-19 dashboard. Our goal is for this to be the best NS COVID map around, clearer and more informative than the province or any other media organization provides. To get there we do an analysis of the data to find each day's new and resolved case numbers in the 14 community health networks, information the province does not provide. For a different but still highly accessible approach to the latest COVID statistics, check out our case table. Note: On July 23, 2021, Nova Scotia announced that it will no longer update case numbers on weekends.
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Case table of the health networks
The Coast uses data logged from Nova Scotia's official COVID-19 dashboard in order to provide this tabulated breakdown. The province reports the number of active cases in each of Nova Scotia's 14 community health networks, but we do the math to be able to report the new and resolved case numbers. We also map the data to provide a different view of the case information. Note: Effective July 23, 2021, the province no longer updates case numbers on weekends.
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New and active cases visualized
Nova Scotia's third wave of COVID grew in April, 2021, peaked in May (227 new cases in one day was the maximum) and subsided in June. On July 17, the province reached five active cases—its lowest level in more than eight months—and an election was called. So when it came time to reset The Coast's chart comparing daily new cases with that day’s active caseload, in order to better reflect disease levels after the third wave, we started from July 17. Two months later, on September 14, the province formally announced the arrival of the fourth wave of COVID. The dark purple line tracks the rise and fall of daily new infections reported by the province; the green area is the province's caseload. In mid-November, The Coast added a golden line to show the 7-day moving average of daily new cases, effectively a smoothed-out version of the purple line that puts the ups and downs into bigger context. Click or hover over any point on the graph and the detail for that moment will pop up. To focus on just some information, click the legend at the top left of the graph to hide or reveal that data set. Note: As of July 23, 2021, the province stopped updating case numbers on weekends. And you can click here for the version of this graph that includes the third wave and its May 10 crest of 1,655 active cases.
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Vaccination in the population
How many Nova Scotians already have one dose of vaccine? How many are fully vaccinated with two doses? And how close are we to the herd immunity goal of 75 percent of the province fully vaxxed? These questions are answered in our chart of the vaccination rate in Nova Scotia since the province started reporting these numbers in January 2021, breaking out people who've had a single dose separate from those who've had the full complement of two doses. (Here's more information about the 75 percent target and what it will take to get there.) Note: The province doesn't update vaccination numbers on weekends.
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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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Breakthrough infections in Nova Scotia
On Fridays, the province's daily COVID report includes statistics about COVID breakthroughs—infections, hospitalizations and deaths among people who are fully or partially vaccinated. The province reports its numbers as a cumulative total: all the breakthrough cases dating from March 15, 2021 to the latest update. The Coast does an analysis to break the information about new cases down by each weekly reporting period, in order to offer our readers the following unique view of the same information, so you can better understand the fluctuations in breakthrough infections as they happen. Note: Our bar chart only dates back to June because the province didn't start this reporting until summer 2021.
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Click here for yesterday's COVID-19 news roundup, for November 29, 2021.