HALIFAX: As Nova Scotia continues to record fewer daily cases of COVID-19, the numbers in this region also continue to drop.
According to the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) web site, in the Inverness, Victoria and Richmond Community Health Network there are four active cases, which is a drop from a high of 22 active cases last week.
After recording four active cases last week, there are now zero cases in the Antigonish and Guysborough Community Health Network.
The Eastern Zone’s COVID-19 response coordinator, Andrew Heighton, advised caution since hospitalizations are increasing around the province.
“It’s always encouraging to see numbers go down, but also we’re well aware that we’re not testing as much in the last few weeks, compared to what we were doing when the numbers were rising,” he said.
As part of “surge planning” for the possibility of more patients, beds have been freed-up and human resources reallocated for facilities around the province, including St. Martha’s Regional Hospital.
“There’s continuous monitoring of our in-patient capacities across the province at every facility so at this point, every facility, on a daily basis, is reviewing what they can do and can’t do, as far as supporting taking patients from other facilities,” Heighton said. “St. Martha’s could be utilized to support anyone across the province if they have capacity and empty beds. But it is set up to take COVID-positive admissions from within the Guysborough-Antigonish-Strait area communities.”
Heighton said there are no plans to move any staff from the testing site at the Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre, or from any testing centres in the Eastern Zone.
“At this time, there’s no need to redeploy any of the staff there to hospitals to support in-patient care,” Heighton said. “Testing is one of the mechanisms we have to help curb COVID across the province, so we need to keep our testing up, as well as compliment human resources for in-patient care.”
When the site first opened, Heighton said they were testing from 300-400 per day, but it is now between 150 and 200 in Port Hawkesbury.
“It’s great, we see people are getting a lot of asymptomatic testing, which is what we’re asking the public to do; make it part of your daily routine and get tested every week or two and we’re seeing a lot of that, which is good,” he said.
Because of the backlog, provincial officials requested that people to refrain from getting tested, but Heighton said that has changed.
“We’re going to put more messaging out in the coming weeks that we have more asymptomatic appointments available and encourage people to start making this part of their routine,” he noted. “I think the testing went down purposely because we did stop asking people to get tested.”
Further proof that the vast majority of Nova Scotians continue to listen to public health officials, is demonstrated by the high numbers of people getting or booking vaccinations, Heighton said.
“The vaccination uptick is very encouraging,” Height stated. “Public health is doing a fantastic job with rolling out vaccinations and it’s just continuing to pick up steam over the past few weeks.”