It was a good news/bad news day fro the provincial COVID-19 update.
Premier Stephen McNeil said that out of 840 tests completed yesterday, there was only one positive result but that news was muted by the announcement of two more deaths at the Northwood long-term care home in Halifax.
“To their families, I am very sorry. All Nova Scotians continue to hold Northwood residents and staff into their thoughts. Our health partners stand with Northwood as we continue to support them in their fight against COVID.”
Northwood has 156 residents and 38 staff with active cases and only one other facility has one staff member with an active case of COVID-19.
There have been 32,835 negative and 1,008 positive COVID-19 test results so far in the province and seven-hundred and twenty-two people have recovered.
Meanwhile, Stephen McNeil says the unemployment numbers released today are reflective of the current situation.
He says many of people have qualified for programs but that the government is continuing to invest in construction of roads and infrastructure project, many of which will begin as things open up more.
“As we start to open up the economy, how can we best support those businesses with those start-up position, ’cause there’s a tremendous amount of cost associated with that that they would have lost a lot of revenues and how can we best support them as they hire our fellow Nova Scotians to keep employed.”
When it comes to opening up Nova Scotia more, it’s a matter of “slow and steady” according to the chief medical officer of health.
Dr. Robert Strang says we have to have a long-term strategy.
“As we talk about what we’re going to do in Phase One, we’re looking at a number of sectors. We need to look at businesses, we continue to open up outdoor activities, we need to start to open up our health care system.”
He says they cannot open up the zones with no recent cases because of the distinct risk of infected people travelling from their zone to any that might have been opened, so Public Health will wait and open the whole province at the same time.
