COVID cases and news for Nova Scotia on Friday, Jul 9

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.

Happy vax crossing day!

What is a vax crossing? Check The Coast's graph of vaccinations in Nova Scotia, at the bottom of this page, and you'll get it. On Thursday, 22,849 people got vaccinated at clinics across the province, and most of them—more than 21,000—received their second dose, while only about 1,500 got the first dose. Adding those numbers to the total of the province's vax rollout, there are now more people in Nova Scotia with two doses of vaccine than only one dose. In other words, the one-dose and two-dose lines crossed on the graph, as the two-dose took the lead.

This is an amazing point to reach, having a majority of vaccinated people with both doses. But the other side of the coin is that the percentage of people with at least one dose in the province continues to stagnate. Although doctor Strang says there are vaccinated people he knows about who aren't yet entered into the system, it's still depressing when the official number barely moves towards the 75 percent target. If this is just a data-entry problem, let's get it figured out and publish a number the province can cheer rather than dread.

Currently the only public number says 73.69 percent of Nova Scotia's population has at least one dose, which is made up of 38.03 percent of people having two doses, and 35.66 percent with just one.

State of emergency continues

In an utterly non-shocking development, the government is extending Nova Scotia's state of emergency by two more weeks. The province has been in an SOE since March 22, 2020. "The province is renewing the state of emergency to protect the health and safety of Nova Scotians and ensure safety measures and other important actions can continue," is how the province describes it in the daily COVID report. "The order will take effect at noon, Sunday, July 11, and extend to noon, Sunday, July 25, unless government terminates or extends it."

Single single

With one new case and one person recovering from their COVID-19 infection, the province is treading water at 39 active cases—just like yesterday. Also like yesterday, there are two people sick enough with COVID to be in the hospital, and one of them is so severe that they are in the ICU.

The newly infected person is a man between the ages of 20 and 39 who lives in the Halifax community health network. His infection is related to travel, according to the province's daily report.

“As we open up to the rest of Canada and start expanding our social circles, it’s important to remember that COVID-19 is still among us,” says top doc Robert Strang in that report. “I encourage all Nova Scotians to get both doses of your vaccine as soon as you can, get tested regularly, continue to keep a physical distance and wear a mask. Doing this will help limit the spread of the virus and allow us to move forward with our reopening plan to have a more normal summer.”

Provincial labs completed 2,770 PCR tests yesterday, lower than the current daily average of about 3,000 tests.

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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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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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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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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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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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 July 8, 2021.