New and active cases in the third wave visualized
By popular demand, here’s our interactive graph charting daily new cases alongside 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. We'll start including this graph more often in the daily COVID updates, adding the latest numbers from the province as we go.
33 new cases as recoveries slow
Saturday, May 29, 2021
New cases
33
New recoveries
48
New deaths
4
Active cases
566
Days in a row with cases
61
Total cases in Nova Scotia during pandemic
5,530
Total COVID deaths
84
Halifax’s lockdown
37 days
Nova Scotia’s lockdown
32 days
The average number of new cases over the last week, including today, is about 46 per day, so Saturday’s 33 cases is definitely below average. That’s moving in the right direction. But there are only 48 recoveries today, where the average has been 103 per day in the last week, so that is considerable off the pace and is not at the right direction for the humans. We have a graph below that visualizes new cases and recoveries, so you can get another sense for how today represents a slowing of recoveries. Currently Nova Scotia has 566 active cases.
There are 43 COVID patients in hospital today—a wonderful number compared to the 53 yesterday—with 18 of them in intensive care, the same as yesterday’s ICU report. Because it’s the weekend, vaccination numbers aren’t reported, but in testing local labs processed 5,837 tests yesterday, which is slightly above the current daily average of about 5,500 tests.
Four people with COVID died, the disease’s deadliest day in more than a year
Today’s COVID report from the province suits a cold, rainy Saturday in lockdown, even if a plan to start loosening restrictions is afoot. Four people have died as a result of catching COVID-19, three of them in Central zone (two men in their 80s and one woman in her 70s) and one, a man in his 80s, in Western zone.
“This is the most deaths reported in one day since May 3, 2020, when six were reported,” says the province’s daily report. But is that correct? There were also four deaths on May 15, 2020, so to us today’s high death toll feels like the most since then. Either way, however, this is the deadliest day in over a year, a horrible day any time.
“My heart is breaking for the loved ones, friends and families of the four Nova Scotians who have died,” says Iain Rankin in the daily report. “On behalf of all Nova Scotians, I want to offer condolences. We need to protect everyone from this virus. Please get vaccinated, tested and follow the restrictions and public health measures.”
“My prayers and condolences are with the families of the four people who passed away,” says CMOH Robert Strang. “I cannot emphasize enough how critical it is to follow both the letter and the spirit of the public health measures to prevent further illness and death from this virus. We must never forget that it is all around us, and that is why it is so important we loosen restrictions and reopen slowly and gradually.”
Charting cases in the NS health networks
Our table uses data logged from Nova Scotia's official COVID-19 dashboard in order to provide this breakdown. The province reports the number of active cases in each of the 14 community health networks, but The Coast does 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.Our map of COVID by community health networks
This map 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 the 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.Graphing infections from start to finish
A person goes from not being infected to catching the virus and testing positive for COVID-19. That's a new case, the beginning of a problem for both the province and that person. In the best scenario, the patient then manages any symptoms, avoids infecting anyone else and eventually recovers from the disease without incident. Each recovery is the end of a problem. Having more recoveries than new cases is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't happen every day. This interactive infographic charts the ebb and flow of each from early in Nova Scotia's third wave—when new cases were much more abundant than recoveries—towards what we hope is the end, when everyone's recovered and there's no more COVID spread.
Click here for yesterday's COVID-19 news roundup, for May 28, 2021.
