Public Health announced 11 new cases of COVID-19 in New Brunswickers on Monday, but six of them are in people currently isolation out of province. In fact, a growing proportion of New Brunswick’s case, 27% over the past two weeks, are located outside of the province.
Three of Monday’s new cases are in Zone 1, with two of those originating in previously reported cases, and one being an out of province case.
In a briefing on Monday, Chief Medical Officer of Health Jennifer Russell explained she was concerned about Zone one, due to two distinct chains of transmission in this health zone, neither of which has been traced to an origin case.
Russell also reiterated her concern about the border with Nova Scotia, considering the ongoing outbreak there, and said that there had been a New Brunswick case traced to the current Nova Scotia outbreak.
In the rest of the province, all health zones reported cases on Monday, with Fredericton, Bathurst and Mirimachi regions only reporting out of province cases.
The Edmundston region, zone 4, reported just one new case from unknown origin, in someone under 19.
There was good news for Zone 4 in Monday’s briefing: after a drop in new cases and people in hospital, the zone has moved back into the yellow phrase of restrictions. The whole province is now yellow.
ATLANTIC PROVINCES UPDATE:
Over in Nova Scotia, that province reported another 121 cases of COVID 19 on Monday, bringing their active case total to 1655. The province says it is still working through a backlog of test results.
There were no new cases in the Cumberland health network, which includes Amherst. There are still 11 active cases of COVID-19 in the Cumberland region.
In PEI, there was one new case reported yesterday, but active cases on the island dropped to 9. There were three new cases reported in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the active case count there remains at 67.
VACCINATIONS OPEN TO ANYONE 40 AND OLDER
Anyone 40 and older can now register for a vaccine at a pharmacy or through a Vitalité clinic. In Sackville, the next Vitalité clinic takes place Wednesday.
“Getting more vaccines into more arms across New Brunswick is a big step in moving us towards a more normal life for all of us,” said Russell on Monday.
PROVINCIAL VACCINE STATS TO BE ADJUSTED DOWNWARD
The province is being forced to adjust its main vaccine rollout statistic downward today, to reflect the fact that Health Canada has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech for children 12 and older.
Instead of reporting vaccinations as a percent of the population, the New Brunswick government has been reporting the statistic as a percent of the eligible population. That percentage is of course larger than the percentage of the full population. Here at CHMA, we only report the number of people vaccinated as a percentage of the full population, because as we’ve heard time and again, COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate according to age, or eligibility for a vaccine.
So, with that in mind, here’s the update on vaccinations in the province:
Just 482 new doses were administered in the province since the last report on Sunday. That’s the lowest number since the vaccine rollout started. Accordingly, the percentage of people who have received a first shot barely shifted yesterday, sitting at just above 35% for the second day in a row.
