Hospitalizations rise on Sunday
Nova Scotia's Sunday COVID update is another "abbreviated" weekend version, with all the limitations of reporting that entails (see "Snowy Saturday" below for more on that). But that doesn't mean it's insignificant. Today the province is reporting a surge in total COVID-related hospitalizations from 217 patients yesterday to 240 today—a jump of more than 10 percent. In one day!
That spike includes a rise from 58 to 68 patients in what seems like the most resource-demanding category, patients the province says "were admitted due to COVID-19 and are receiving specialized care in a COVID-19 designated unit." At least the number of those patients in the ICU held steady at 10 from yesterday to today. For the breakdown in other patient categories, check our hospitalizations chart below.
As for new COVID infections, the province is reporting 696 "lab-confirmed cases" today. Those build from 36 new cases in the Northern health zone, to 105 and 108 cases in the Western and Eastern zones respectively, to 447 in Central zone. There were 627 cases yesterday.
Snowy Saturday
As Nova Scotia shovels out, COVID cools down a little bit. In its "abbreviated" Saturday report, the province is announcing 627 new infections, down from the nearly 900 reported yesterday, and well below the current 7-day average of 738 cases per day.
Part of the weekend report's abbreviation is there's no estimate of the active caseload, so we have not updated our graph of active cases below, and in the graph of new, average and active cases, we are using yesterday's caseload number.
Similarly, the province says there are currently 58 people in a COVID unit in the hospital—that's up from 57 yesterday—but it hasn't broken down their vaccination status as it typically does on weekdays. So in our new hospitalizations chart, we designated all 58 as "In COVID unit, vax status unknown." Presumably on Monday their vaccination status will be restored, but for now you can still get a sense from the chart of how today's 217 total hospitalizations compare to yesterday's 214.
Hospitalizations during omicron
Early in 2022, Nova Scotia subtly shifted attention from new COVID cases to people actually in hospital with the disease, and as part of that shift started reporting the vaccination status of patients "receiving specialized care in a COVID-19 designated unit." On Jan 12—the day the bars on the following chart jump way up—the province added two more categories of hospitalized COVID patient to its daily reports. One is "people who were identified as positive upon arrival to hospital but were admitted for another medical reason or people who were admitted for COVID-19 but no longer require specialized care." (These patients are categorized as "Non-severe COVID case" on the chart.) The other category is category is "people who contracted COVID-19 after being admitted to hospital," as the province puts it, termed "Caught COVID in hospital" on the chart. You can filter categories in and out by clicking the labels near the top of the chart, but whatever numbers you are considering, the province points out it's "important to note that less than 10 percent of Nova Scotians are unvaccinated."
jump back to the top
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 2021-22
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 the previous COVID-19 news roundup, for January 14, 2022.
