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 and active cases Vaccination rate Nova Scotia’s third and fourth waves Breakthrough infections Canada’s fourth wave
COVID Xplosion breaks data dashboard
Friday, December 10, 2021
Reopening status
Phase 5, almost
New cases
123
New recoveries
16
New deaths
0
Active cases
301
Total cases in Nova Scotia during pandemic
8,655
Total COVID deaths
110
For the basic breakdown on the 123 new cases, we turn to the Friday provincial COVID report "There are 56 cases in Central Zone, 60 cases in Eastern Zone, 6 cases in Northern Zone, and one case in Western Zone," the report says.
At this point, we'd usually tell you how these cases break down at the level of Nova Scotia's 14 community health networks, explaining how the provincial COVID data dashboard gives different information than the written report, and bragging about our unique data analysis to track the numbers. But it turns out the infection Xplosion is overwhelming the public health folks, who cannot type the cases into the Panorama tracking software system fast enough to keep up with the positive diagnoses coming out of provincial testing labs.
"Because of the outbreak at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, beginning today, the number of positive cases using lab results, not Panorama results, will be reported to better reflect the situation on the ground," says the written report.
With the province essentially putting the dashboard on the back burner, The Coast will also stop using the dashboard until it's back in realtime service. That means our famous map and table of COVID cases in Nova Scotia are suspended until further notice, as is our chart of infections in children age 11 and younger. Until they return, you can find the last updated version of these infographics on yesterday's Coast COVID report.
Because it's Friday, the written report includes the reminder note that "Nova Scotia is not issuing COVID-19 news releases or updating the COVID-19 data dashboard on weekends. Monday updates will include weekend data." Because it's the Friday two weeks since Nova Scotia's state of emergency was last extended for 14 days, it's officially extended again today for the next two weeks.
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.
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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. 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.
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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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Breakthrough infections in Nova Scotia
On Fridays, the province's daily COVID report includes statistics about COVID breakthroughs—infections, hospitalizations and deaths among people who are fully or partially vaccinated. The province reports its numbers as a cumulative total: all the breakthrough cases dating from March 15, 2021 to the latest update. The Coast does an analysis to break the information about new cases down by each weekly reporting period, in order to offer our readers the following unique view of the same information, so you can better understand the fluctuations in breakthrough infections as they happen. Note: Our bar chart only dates back to June because the province didn't start this reporting until summer 2021.
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Click here for yesterday's COVID-19 news roundup, for December 9, 2021.
