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.
Map of NS community health networks  Table of community networks  New and active cases  Recoveries  Daily average infections  Vaccination rate
4 cases and 4 recoveries
Nova Scotia should be having a neutral COVID day today, with four new infections balanced by four patients recovering from the disease since yesterday, maintaining yesterday’s 58 active cases. But no. Even with a net of zero cases and zero recoveries, the province is reporting 57 active cases, a drop of one from yesterday.
The province typically shrugs off these sort of strange numbers as the result of case information getting updated in the Panorama public health tracking system, and that’s hard to argue with—especially because the province can always cite patient confidentiality as the reason not to release more information. This is usually annoying to journalists who are trying to understand exactly what is happening, but sometimes we manage to take the broader view that such random unexplained occurrences are a useful reminder of how little the world knows about COVID. Change can be frustrating and confusing, like when the delta plus variant comes along before we’ve even processed the existence of the delta mutation, but it can also be a sign of improved understanding.
Yesterday the province’s data dashboard reported that there have been 5,828 COVID cases in Nova Scotia during the pandemic, today’s it’s reporting a total of 5,831 cases, a difference of three new cases rather than the four being reported today. The dashboard’s map of the Eastern health authority zone showed 603 total cases in the zone during the pandemic as of yesterday, and 605 cases today, even through the province says there are three new cases in Eastern. So it looks like one case previously reported in the Eastern zone was ruled a non-case in the last day for some reason—the kind of mystery the province never helps solve—lowering the zone and the provincial total by one, before today’s three new cases were added to the Eastern zone.
As for the other case of the four reported today, the province’s daily COVID update says it’s in the Central zone. (Our map and table of C19 in Nova Scotia’s community health networks reveal it to be in the Halifax network.) The Halifax case and two of the three in Eastern zone are under investigation as possible community spread; the other Eastern zone case is a close contact of another COVID patient.
There are two people currently in hospital with COVID, neither of them in intensive care. Local labs processed 3,029 PCR tests yesterday, lower than the current average of about 3,500 daily tests. And in the first vaccination report since the weekend’s typical vax stat silence, clinics across Nova Scotia averaged about 9,500 jabs per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, far below the current average of over 15,000 vaccinations per day. Out of over 28,000 vaccines delivered on the weekend, nearly 26,000 of them were second doses to people who’d already been vaccinated once.
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.
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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.
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New and active cases visualized
This interactive graph charts COVID activity in Nova Scotia’s third wave, comparing daily new cases with that day’s active caseload. The dark line tracks the rise and fall of new infections reported by the province, which hit a Nova Scotian pandemic record high of 227 cases in a single day on May 7. The green area is the province’s caseload, which peaked May 10 at 1,655 active cases. Click or however over any point on the graph and the detail for that moment will pop up. To focus on just new or active cases, you can click the legend at the top left of the graph to hide or reveal that data set.
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Recoveries and infections graphed
A person who tests positive for COVID-19 counts as a new case, the beginning of a problem for both the province and that person. The best ending to the problem is the patient recovers from the disease. This interactive chart compares how many problems started (the red area of new cases) to how many ended (the blue area’s recoveries) each day in Nova Scotia’s third wave, revealing growth trends along the way. Click or hover over any point on the graph and the detail for that day will pop up, to reveal exactly how quickly things change: May 7 had Nova Scotia’s most-ever infections diagnosed in one day, 227 new cases, more than triple the 71 recoveries that day. Two weeks later, May 21, had a record recoveries, 197 in a day, more than double the 84 new cases. To focus on just new cases or recoveries, you can click the legend at the top left of the graph to hide or reveal that data set.
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Average and daily new cases
Knowing the average number of new cases Nova Scotia has every day—the orange area in this graph—is useful to show the trend of infections without one day’s ups or downs distorting the picture. Having the daily new cases as well, the dark line on the graph, gives a sense of how each day compares to the average. We use the rolling (AKA moving or running) 7-day average of daily data reported by the province; here’s a good explainer of what a rolling average is.
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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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Click here for yesterday’s COVID-19 news roundup, for June 27, 2021.
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2021.