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.
New cases rise to 25 on Thursday
Today's good news: The active caseload drops yet again—for the 18th day in a row—and is now at 273 active cases. (See active cases graph below.) That's thanks to 60 people recovering from COVID since yesterday. (See the recoveries graphed, too.)
The awful news is that the 88th Nova Scotian has died of COVID, a man in his thirties who becomes the youngest person killed by the disease in the province. (See capsule below.)
The bad news is that the number of fresh COVID-19 infections also went up again, to 25 new cases. That's the second day in a row of increases, those days coincidentally being the first two days of Phase 1 of Nova Scotia's reopening plan. The province was in lockdown for 35 days in order to stop the spread of new cases, and now that we are slowly loosening public health restrictions the cases are rising. What an inauspicious start to the unlocking. (Both the active cases graph and the recoveries chart also show the rise and fall of new cases.)
The province is reporting the 25 new cases are spread across the Central health authority zone (15 cases, 11 of them close contacts, two travel-related and two under investigation), Eastern zone (eight cases, six of them close contacts, one each travel and under investigation) and Northern (two cases, one each travel and under investigation). Western zone has no new cases today.
For the breakdown of where new cases are in the community health networks, check out our map and the community case table, both below. The Antigonish/Guysborough network actually had a case removed from its cumulative COVID total since yesterday—the province is constantly updating information in its tracking system—so it shows up as having the fewest new cases at minus one. Halifax has the most cases with eight, followed by Dartmouth with five.
There's good news in hospitalizations, with numbers dropping steeply since yesterday's report. Current there are 22 COVID patients in hospital, with nine of them in intensive care; yesterday there were 38 patients, 15 of those in ICU.
Testing is up by nearly 1,000 noses since yesterday's report, with 5,235 tests completed by the NS lab. That's a little bit above the current average of about 5,000 tests per day—another bit of good news.
And finally, to end on a welcome high note, the vaccination effort reached 13,780 people across the province on Wednesday, way up from Tuesday's mark of about 5,700 vaccine doses delivered. One of those jabs was vaccination number 600,000 since the province started the vax rollout in July.
Nova Scotia's youngest COVID death
"A man in his 30s has died in Central Zone," the province reports Thursday, the second day of Nova Scotia's gradual reopening. He becomes the youngest person to die of COVID, and the ninth person to die of COVID in the past week—the deadliest week in more than a year, since the stretch from May 9 through May 15, 2020 when nine Nova Scotians also died. The pandemic has now killed 88 people in the province, 23 of them in 2021.
“On behalf of all Nova Scotians, I wish to offer sincere condolences to the family and friends who are mourning the loss of a loved one,” says premier Iain Rankin via the report. “Please get vaccinated as soon as you can, get tested on a regular basis and follow the restrictions and public health measures.”
“My thoughts and prayers are with those who are grieving,” says chief medical officer of health Robert Strang. “This is the youngest Nova Scotian who has died from COVID-19 and is a stark reminder that the virus can have devastating impacts. Do your part and book your vaccine appointment if you haven’t done so already. Together we can slow the spread of the virus.”
Recoveries and infections graphed
A person who tests positive for COVID-19 counts as a new case, the beginning of a problem for both the province and that person. The best ending to the problem is the patient recovers from the disease. This interactive chart compares how many problems started (the red area of new cases) to how many ended (the blue area's recoveries) each day in Nova Scotia's third wave, revealing growth trends along the way. Click or hover over any point on the graph and the detail for that day will pop up, to reveal exactly how quickly things change: May 7 had Nova Scotia's most-ever infections diagnosed in one day, 227 new cases, more than triple the 71 recoveries that day. Two weeks later, May 21, had a record recoveries, 197 in a day, more than double the 84 new cases. To focus on just new cases or recoveries, you can click the legend at the top left of the graph to hide or reveal that data set.
New and active cases visualized
This interactive graph charts COVID activity in Nova Scotia's third wave, comparing daily new cases with that day’s active caseload. The dark line tracks the rise and fall of new infections reported by the province, which hit a Nova Scotian pandemic record high of 227 cases in a single day on May 7. The green area is the province's caseload, which peaked May 10 at 1,655 active cases. Click or however over any point on the graph and the detail for that moment will pop up. To focus on just new or active cases, you can click the legend at the top left of the graph to hide or reveal that data set.
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.
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.
Click here for yesterday's COVID-19 news roundup, for June 2, 2021.
