4 new cases of COVID-19 are announced by Nova Scotia on Wednesday, Dec. 23 — but 2 of them aren’t in Nova Scotia

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The Nova Scotia government announced four new cases of COVID-19 today (Wednesday, Dec. 22) — but two of those cases involve people who aren’t in the province.

A release from the Department of Health and Wellness says that two of the new cases are “in” Nova Scotia Health’s Central Zone — one is a close contact with a previously announced case, and the other is still under investigation. Additionally, the release says there is one case “in” both the Western Zone and the Eastern Zone, and both are close contacts with previously announced cases. The release says that the case in the Eastern Zone is not related to the previously announced case on the Eskasoni First Nation.

However, the release continues:

Two of the cases being reported today are close contacts of previously reported cases in another province or territory. The people are not in Nova Scotia, but since they are Nova Scotia residents, they are included in our cumulative provincial data.

As reader Andrew Burke points out, this creates unneeded uncertainty with the public:

This is such a perfect example of process over practicality.

These numbers are only publicly useful if they show how many cases are IN Nova Scotia.

By this logic, could we have 100s of infected Ontarians here not showing in our stats because they're only in Ontario's stats? https://t.co/Hfuwj1QV2W

— Andrew Burke (@ajlburke) December 23, 2020

That confusion aside, there are now 35 known active cases “in” the province, albeit two of them aren’t actually in the province. No one is currently in hospital with the disease.

Nova Scotia Health labs conducted 1,519 tests yesterday.

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

And here is the active caseload for the second wave:

Here is the possible exposure map:

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