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.

9 new cases

Except for some good COVID news yesterday that included Nova Scotia reaching 70 percent fully vaccinated, this has been a pandemic week we’re happy to forget. Today’s provincial report of a relatively high nine new cases only gives us more reason to look forward to the now-standard weekend hiatus on the province’s reports.

According to the province, four of the cases are in the Central health authority zone, three are in Western, and Northern and Eastern each have one new case. All of the cases are connected to travel or previously infected people.

Our map and table of COVID in the community health networks, lower down on this page, identify 12 new cases instead of nine. That’s because three earlier infections—which didn’t have enough information about the patients in the public health system to be placed in a specific community—were placed in a community today. They are the negative three showing up in the table under Community not known. We don’t know which of the cases in the Central zone networks are the four newly announced by the province today, and which three are “new” because of new information, and the province makes no effort to clarify, so we are showing all seven new and “new” cases in the table and map. Dartmouth community network leads the province with four infections, followed by the Annapolis Valley and Halifax networks with two apiece.

Four people with COVID recovered from their infections since yesterday’s report, meaning the caseload rises today by (nine new cases minus four recoveries equals) five infections to 55 active cases. As our chart of new and active cases shows, this is the highest caseload since the third wave ended.

In case you’re wondering, back in April when we were heading into the third wave, the caseload got as high as 111 active cases before top doc Robert Strang and then-premier Iain Rankin announced a “circuit breaker” lockdown on April 22. At the time, urban Halifax was the hotbed of new infections, and the lockdown only applied to Halifax, and only until May 20. But within days the whole province was locked down, and reopening from lockdown became a gradual five-phase process that started June 2 with limited unlocking of restrictions for Phase 1, and hasn’t ended yet. Phase 5 is scheduled to start September 15 if we hit our vaccination target, and some border restrictions and quarantining for unvaccinated travellers will be in place indefinitely.

Where were we before that trip down Pandemic Memory Lane? Oh yeah, Nova Scotia is now at 55 active cases, and it wasn’t until more than double that level that we surrendered to the third wave and went back into lockdown.

In other COVID stats of the day, nobody is in the hospital due to the disease, provincial labs completed 2,857 tests yesterday (a bit below the recent average of about 3,000 daily tests) and the above-recent-average 3,740 vaccinations put Nova Scotia at 70.55 percent fully vaccinated and 77.66 percent of the population with at least one dose. (Our chart of vaccination rates is below.) The Coast’s animated tracker of vaccination levels across Canada will not reflect these numbers, because we use the federal government’s data that’s a week old. Still, Nova Scotia is performing very well compared to the rest of the country.

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. The dark line tracks the rise and fall of new infections reported by the province; the green area is the province’s caseload. Click or hover over any point on the graph and the detail for that moment will pop up. To focus on just new or active cases, 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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Click here for yesterday’s COVID-19 news roundup, for August 26, 2021.

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This article appears in Aug 1-30, 2021.

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