New and active cases Nova Scotia’s third and fourth waves Canada’s fourth wave
No COVID in 2022
The province is taking a break from COVID reporting tomorrow for the New Year's Day holiday. That means for one glorious day you could pretend there's no such thing as a pandemic in 2022. Reality will return Sunday, January 2. Until then, everyone at The Coast wishes you a happy new year.
Back above 600 daily cases
In Nova Scotia's last COVID report of 2021, the number of new infections is over 600 for the first time since last Friday. There are 618 new cases today, up nearly 100 infections from the 522 reported yesterday. The province estimates there are 5,117 active cases, the most Nova Scotia has ever reported in the entire pandemic.
Can you handle a little more bad news as we get ready to say goodbye to this whole awful year? The number of people in hospital with COVID is also up to 34 patients, a jump from the 25 hospitalizations yesterday. And where only three of those patients were sick enough to require intensive care yesterday, today there are four people in ICU.
Crappy anniversary
It was two years ago today that China told the World Health Organization about an outbreak of "pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan City." That was the first official acknowledgement of what we'd soon come to know as COVID-19. Two fucking years. And the third starts tomorrow during an unprecedented global surge of infections. What fresh hell does 2022 have in store?
On 31 December 2019, WHO was informed of cases of #pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan City, #China. A total of 44 cases have been reported: 11 patients are severely ill, while the remaining 33 are in stable condition.https://t.co/1n5mM3f4Nr pic.twitter.com/cKoj0CBpyT
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 5, 2020
Comparing active cases in the third and fourth waves
In December, the town of Antigonish became ground zero for an inter-provincial COVID outbreak due to a weekend of superspreader events connected to the annual presentation of X-Rings at St. Francis Xavier University. But how bad is the outbreak, really? The following chart lets you compare Nova Scotia's active cases, dating from the third wave in April through the fourth wave and its infection Xplosion, using case data from provincial pandemic reports. The chart will be updated when provincial reporting allows. Note: From Dec 10 through Dec 22, Nova Scotia was too overwhelmed by new COVID cases to report recoveries or an official active case count; the active case numbers on this graph for those dates have been calculated by adding each day's new cases to the last official active count, and are therefore a maximum active caseload. Starting Dec 23, the province is issuing an "estimated" number of active cases.
jump back to the top
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. Also, from Dec 10 through Dec 22, Nova Scotia was too overwhelmed by new COVID cases to report recoveries or an official active case count; the active case numbers on this graph for those dates have been calculated by adding each day's new cases to the last official active count, and are therefore a maximum active caseload. Starting Dec 23, the province is issuing an "estimated" number of active cases.
jump back to the top
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.
jump back to the top
Click here for yesterday's COVID-19 news roundup, for December 30, 2021.