There have been four more deaths at the Northwood long-term care home in Halifax, bringing the provincial total to 51.
Northwood currently has 64 residents and 13 staff with active cases, while two other facilities have active cases, one with one staff member, the other with one resident.
Dr. Robert Strang, the chief medical officer of health, says the number of cases in these facilities has dropped significantly because of audits and reconciliations of their data.
“That’s why you’ll see today that Northwood’s active cases among residents dropped from 157 to 64, so we have a much truer picture of our number of active cases.”
He says there are also five more staff members listed as active who were mistakenly labelled as recovered until today.
There have been 34,604 negative COVID-19 test results in the province so far, as well as 1,024 positive results and 51 deaths, while 870 people are listed as recovered. Nine people are in the hospital, four of them in Intensive Care.
Strang, says they are still looking at that but it’s a complicated situation, something they’ve discussed with New Brunswick, who have already implemented it.
“They’ve had to invest a lot of time in communication and helping people to understand that. There’s still many challenges to that, ’cause you’re still limiting between making families make a choice potentially, that they can visit one set of relatives but you can’t visit another set.”
When the restrictions are eased a bit more, many people will be waiting for day surgeries and short term hospital stays that were cancelled due to COVID-19.
Premier Stephen McNeil says the minister and deputy minister are in discussions with the Nova Scotia Health Authority and other partners about how and when to allow those.
“They’ll work through that without overloading the system to make sure they’re still there, that if COVID needs a response. That work is ongoing, there has not been a definitive date when that may start but that work is ongoing and they will continue that and as soon as we know that, we’ll let all Nova Scotians know.”
The Premier and Dr. Strang continue to stress that any relaxation of restrictions depend on epidemiology data and whether or not residents follow all the protocols in place.
