Nova Scotia is reporting three new infections today. “The cases are in Central Zone and are all close contacts of previously reported cases,” says the province’s daily COVID-19 media update. They’re all in the Dartmouth community health network, says our table at the bottom of this story, which analyses provincial data.
With three patients recovering in the Central zone since Thursday—luckily the province isn’t announcing another death as it did yesterday—to balance the three new cases, Nova Scotia is still at 17 active cases. But for the first time in weeks, nobody is in the hospital because of C19. This is a victory!
Because the province’s hospitals are currently clear of the disease, it seems a good day for the province to formally announce plans to bring back the no-quarantine Atlantic travel bubble by April 19, and to throw open Nova Scotia’s borders to visitors from New Brunswick starting tomorrow morning. That happened at today’s regular C19 briefing; click here to get our full story (a briefing on the briefing, if you will).
In other great news, Thursday’s vaccination numbers set a new record for daily doses delivered into deltoids, with 2,860 injections. The previous record of 2,824 was set the day before. But Thursday’s big dosing day also break the province’s pattern where the Wednesday in each week was the best day, as if the province’s systems could only get into high gear after a couple days of practise, then needed a couple days to recover from the exertion.
As the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s vaccination supremo, Gary O’Toole, told us yesterday, “There is nothing special about Wednesday. There is no intention around this, and I suspect as clinics continue to ramp up and as doses increase into the province, this will change.” Sure enough, one day later it changed.
With that record day, the number of people in Nova Scotia who are now fully vaccinated (both doses) reached 20,050. Hitting that 20,000 mark feels like a milestone worth celebrating.
In less auspicious milestones, today the province announced that Nova Scotia’s state of emergency is being extended for yet another two weeks, officially counting from Sunday, March 21. The SOE first came into effect Sunday, March 22, 2020, so the anniversary of the province’s first emergency year is almost upon us. Yet another C19 anniversary in a year that will be full of them.
Where Nova Scotia’s COVID-19 cases are on Friday, March 19
| HEALTH ZONE & NETWORK | NEW CASES | CLOSED CASES | ACTIVE CASES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 7 active |
| Yarmouth | – | – | – |
| Lunenburg | – | – | – |
| Wolfville | – | – | 7 |
| Central zone totals | 3 new | 3 closed | 10 active |
| West Hants | – | – | – |
| Halifax | – | 1 | 3 |
| Dartmouth | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Bedford | – | 1 | 3 |
| Eastern Shore | – | – | – |
| Northern zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 0 active |
| Truro | – | – | – |
| Amherst | – | – | – |
| Pictou | – | – | – |
| Eastern zone totals | 0 new | 0 closed | 0 active |
| Antigonish | – | – | – |
| Inverness | – | – | – |
| Sydney | – | – | – |
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.
This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2021.
