Nova Scotia reports 91 in designated COVID-19 hospital units on Tuesday

Nova Scotia reported 91 people were in a designated COVID-19 hospital unit on Tuesday, including 14 in the ICU.

Since the Omicron wave began on Dec. 8, 51 Nova Scotians have died due to COVID-19. 

The age range of those in hospital is 0 to 97, the average age is 65 and the average length of stay in hospital is 8.3 days, according to a news release.

On Saturday, Nova Scotia reported 102 people in a designated COVID-19 hospital unit, which was the highest number of hospitalizations reported in months.

Premier Tim Houston and Nova Scotia Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang will provide a COVID-19 update on Wednesday at 3 p.m.

There are also two other groups of people in hospital related to COVID-19:

• There are 130 people who were identified as positive upon arrival at hospital but were admitted for another medical reason, or were admitted for COVID-19 but no longer require specialized care.
• There are 142 people who contracted COVID-19 after being admitted to hospital.

The vaccination status of those in hospital is:

• Twenty-one (23.1 per cent) people have had a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
• Thirty-six (39.5 per cent) are fully vaccinated (two doses).
• One (1.1 per cent) is partially vaccinated.
• Thirty-three (36.3 per cent) are unvaccinated.

Currently, unvaccinated Nova Scotians are about four times more likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 than someone with two doses of vaccine. That is based on average hospitalizations since the province started releasing the daily hospitalization numbers by vaccine status on Jan. 4.

Between Dec. 8 and Feb. 2, unvaccinated people were also more than four times as likely to die from COVID-19 than someone who had received two doses of vaccine, and more than seven times as likely to die of COVID-19 than someone who had received a booster dose.

Hundreds of Nova Scotia Health staff off work

According to Nova Scotia Health, 426 employees are off work as of Tuesday because they've either tested positive for COVID-19, are awaiting results of a test, or they've been exposed to someone in their household who has tested positive. 

The breakdown of those absences are as follows: 

• Western zone: 83
• Central zone: 173
• Northern zone: 74
• Eastern zone: 96

There were 112 fewer employees off work this week than last week, however the health authority said last week's numbers were artificially low because of delays in testing due to the weather.

Police issue dozens of tickets for breaking health rules

In a news release, Halifax Regional Police said they issued summary offence tickets to 51 people at a gathering last Friday. Police were called to a noise complaint at around 7:45 p.m. Each of the people at the gathering not following rules under the Health Protection Act were fined $2,422.

A few hours before that, at around 3:50 p.m., officers in Halifax responded to a noise complaint made about another gathering. Police issued fines of $2,422 to two 18-year-olds.  

Number of cases

Nova Scotia labs completed 2,020 tests on Monday and reported an additional 219 new lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19.

There are 81 cases in the central zone, 46 cases in the eastern zone, 41 cases in the northern zone and 51 cases in the western zone.

As of Tuesday, there are an estimated 3,132 active cases of COVID-19 in Nova Scotia.