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You are here: Home / Featured / 2 cases of COVID-19 announced in Nova Scotia on Wednesday, March 17; Strang responds to concerns about perceived slow vaccine rollout

2 cases of COVID-19 announced in Nova Scotia on Wednesday, March 17; Strang responds to concerns about perceived slow vaccine rollout

March 17, 2021 By Tim Bousquet 3 Comments

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

Two new cases of COVID-19 are announced in Nova Scotia today (Wednesday, March 17).

One case is in Nova Scotia Health’s Central Zone and is a close contact of a previously announced case. The other case is in the Western Zone and is related to travel outside Atlantic Canada.

One of the new cases is a man aged 40-59. The other is a woman 80 or older.

There are 15 known active cases in the province. One person is in hospital with the disease, but not in ICU.

The active cases are distributed as follows:

• 3 in the Halifax Peninsula/Chebucto Community Health Network in the Central Zone
• 3 in the Dartmouth/Southeastern Community Health Network in the Central Zone
• 2 in the Bedford/Sackville Community Health Network in the Central Zone
• 7 in the Annapolis and Kings Community Health Network in the Western Zone

Nova Scotia Health labs completed 1,749 tests yesterday.

Pop-up testing has been scheduled for the following locations:

Wednesday: Halifax Convention Centre, noon-6pm
Friday: Dalhousie University Goldberg Building, noon-7:30pm
Friday: Glasgow Square Theatre, New Glasgow, 1-7:30pm
Friday: Dalhousie University Goldberg Building, noon-7:30pm
Saturday, Glasgow Square Theatre, New Glasgow, 9:30am-5pm
Saturday: Dalhousie University Goldberg Building, 11am-6pm
Sunday: Halifax Convention Centre, noon-5pm
Sunday: Liverpool Legion, noon-7pm
Monday: Liverpool Legion, 9:30m-4:30pm
Monday: Halifax Convention Centre, noon-6pm

You can also get tested at the Nova Scotia Health labs by going here.

As of end of day yesterday, 52,352 doses of vaccine have been administered — 34,530 first doses and 17,822 second doses.

People who are 80 or over and who were born in the first 8 months of the year (January 1 to August 31) can book a vaccine appointment here.

People who are 63 or 64 years old can book an appointment to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine here; those deciding to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine will not be eligible to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

As to concerns that there are delays in administering vaccine, I had this exchange with Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang yesterday:

Bousquet: I’m sure you’ve seen people complaining and pointing to numbers. We’re going to be getting 80,000 a week, ballpark, doses of vaccine. What would be a realistic number for the timeline to get those vaccines from being received out into people? Will we see numbers like 160,000 or 240,000 in possession, but not administered yet? You understand what I’m trying to get at?

Strang: You know, right now we have a bit of a lag because we’ve got some second doses held back and people that already had an appointment for a second dose — we’re going to hold ourselves to the promise in terms of when they gave a consent for the vaccine. So we have a few more weeks of holding back a second dose. But in the next few weeks, every vaccine we get is going to be delivered as a first dose of vaccine, and there will be no more hold back. We know what the projections of the weekly amounts of vaccine we’re going to get, and so we’re building a program that if we get, let’s say, the first week in April, we’re going to get X amount of vaccine, we will use that vaccine by the second week in April. So we’re building our program; whatever we get in one week will be delivered by the next week. So there won’t be vaccine sitting around. It’ll be delivered in a very timely manner.

Bousquet: I hear you. But there’s an awful lot of confusion or suspicion or just anger at this — people are saying, look, if I subtract out the second doses that Nova Scotia has, there’s still 40,000 that are on hand. And what I’m hearing you say is it will take up to 14 days for any dose? 

Strang: So let’s use the number 40,000. That 40,000, that’s what’s going into arms this week. People are forgetting that we are actively immunizing people every day. So we have to have a bunch of vaccine at the start of the week that we roll out and deliver to clinics across the province and by the end of the week it will be delivered. So the vaccine we get in one week has to come in centrally and then gets distributed out to vaccine clinics and is used throughout that week and into the next week. So there’s always going to be a chunk of vaccine — if people are looking at how much vaccine is in the province today, what they’re missing is that there is a portion of that vaccine that’s going into arms today, tomorrow, Thursday, Friday.

Here are the new daily cases and seven-day rolling average (today at 1.3) since the start of the second wave (Oct. 1):

And here is the active caseload for the second wave:


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Filed Under: Featured, News

About Tim Bousquet

Tim Bousquet is the editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. email: [email protected]; Twitter

Comments

  1. Robert Davison says

    March 17, 2021 at 3:37 pm

    add me to list of those who Covid-vaccination passports as a dumb idea
    I am getting vaccinated March 25

    Log in to Reply
  2. Tom Servaes says

    March 17, 2021 at 8:41 pm

    Ok, so 40,000 doses per week, that’s 8,000 vaccines in arms per day. If you’re counting a regular 8-hour work day that’s 1,000 injections per hour. I think that’s a logistical feat this province hasn’t seen and we can cut them a little slack.

    Log in to Reply
    • Tim Bousquet says

      March 17, 2021 at 8:55 pm

      The plan is to be at ~12,000 doses per day by the end of April.

      Log in to Reply

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The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Keonté Beals. Photo: Keke Beatz

Episode #21 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

The young R&B artist Keonté Beals — Tara’s former NSCC student, by the way — started out singing in church in North Preston and performing popular covers before digging into who he is an artist. On his debut album KING, he sings about love, loyalty, and authenticity. He zooms in for a chat about its creation, his children’s book, and how not even a pandemic can keep him down.

This episode is available today only for premium subscribers; to become a premium subscriber, click here, and join the select group of arts and entertainment supporters for just $5/month.

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Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

About the Halifax Examiner

Examiner folk The Halifax Examiner was founded by investigative reporter Tim Bousquet, and now includes a growing collection of writers, contributors, and staff. Left to right: Joan Baxter, Stephen Kimber, Linda Pannozzo, Erica Butler, Jennifer Henderson, Iris the Amazing, Tim Bousquet, Evelyn C. White, El Jones, Philip Moscovitch More about the Examiner.

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