New and active cases  Nova Scotia’s third and fourth waves Canada’s fourth wave
Is the fever breaking?
At any other point in the pandemic, Nova Scotia having 611 new cases in a day would be cause for extreme concern. But today, it is more like a reason to celebrate. With the 611 infections reported Friday, the province breaks its streak of ever-increasing cases that lead to one new infection record after another. After the 689 cases yesterday, today’s 611 cases just might be a sign that the peak has been passed, that after two straight weeks of surging COVID the fever is breaking.
Then again, the dip in infections could be related to the fact that after two weeks of overwhelm, the province has started running low on supplies to do COVID testing. Before today’s case report was released, the province issued a press release asking people not to get tested too much because of the looming shortage. For the province that lead the country with its expanded testing efforts, it must be hard to face the risk of missing cases due to a lack of tests.
“We have finite resources for lab-based testing, and we also have a limited supply of rapid tests over the next few weeks. We need to use those resources wisely given the current epidemiology,” says Doctor Strang in the announcement. “Our priority for PCR testing has to be on people who are most vulnerable to disease and people who are needed to keep our healthcare system running.”
Even as Strang says “everyone who needs a COVID-19 test will get one,” he really doesn’t want you to use up a test unless you have a good reason to think you have the disease. “Nobody should be using these precious resources every few days just to feel safe. We need to focus most testing on people who have symptoms or are close contacts.”
Strang also hints that the tighter restrictions on gathering announced Tuesday actually mean Nova Scotia just went into its latest extended lockdown. “For at least the next few weeks, everyone needs to limit socializing to their consistent group of 10 which includes their own household, so there shouldn’t be a need for a lot of testing for social occasions.”
As of now, if you have symptoms or a close contact, first thing you do is go into self isolation. Over the Christmas holiday weekend, you then book a PCR test or use a rapid test (if you still have any or you can go to the Convention Centre or Alderney Landing testing sites in Halifax and Dartmouth). After the weekend, you’ll use the province’s online COVID self-assessment tool from your self isolation, and it will tell you what your next testing step is.
The Coast’s struggles to inform
As surely as the provincial government is overwhelmed by the fourth wave of COVID, so are we at The Coast. With information and understanding changing constantly, we are finding it hard to keep you accurately informed quickly. When we have to choose between accuracy and speed, we are going for accuracy every time; when that means our daily reports are later than you’re used to, we hope you understand.
The province is not doing any COVID reporting on Christmas Day (Dec 25), then will do what it calls “abbreviated” reporting Dec 26-28 before returning to its current normal reporting Wednesday Dec 29. And by “current normal” we mean at least a month of information that is diminished in as-yet-unexplained ways.
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.
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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. 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.
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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 December 23, 2021.
Related Stories
COVID cases and news for Nova Scotia on Sunday, Dec 26
COVID cases and news for Nova Scotia on Monday, Dec 27
COVID cases and news for Nova Scotia on Tuesday, Dec 28
This article appears in Dec 9-29, 2021.