I thought I'd give an update on how Nova Scotia is doing in our battle against the COVID-19 3rd wave:
We had been happily toodling along at low single digit numbers of daily new cases until mid-April. Then, numbers started to dramatically increase and on April 22nd, when we hit 38 new cases, restrictions were ramped up to combat it. On April 27th, when we hit 96 new cases, those restrictions were further enhanced to:
These restrictions are still in effect, but will be gradually reduced, starting on Wednesday.
How effective were they? We peaked at 227 new cases on May 7th, followed by a gradual decline and today, we have 17 new cases. Active case numbers reached well over 2000 at the peak, but are now below 500. Hospital cases put some added strain on our health care system and we had about 20 deaths over the past month. But, hospital bed/ICU capacity was never seriously threatened.
Vaccination progress has been very good and we have passed 50% of the population who have received at least one shot. Since older people were prioritized for vaccination, 3rd wave infections have skewed towards younger people. My hope is that we can see a high percentage of the populace having received their second doses before we get hit by the so-called Indian variant.
Meanwhile, the province of Manitoba has become a COVID $hit$how.
Manitoba officials didn't heed warnings about a 3rd COVID-19 wave. Now hospitals are overwhelmed | CBC News
I'm not bragging about Nova Scotia's accomplishment to wrestle the numbers down, I'm just saying that you can't be half-assed about public health measures when trying to address a serious outbreak.