Nova Scotia Tightens Covid-19 Restrictions After Recent Outbreak
HALIFAX — The provincial government is tightening restrictions for people entering Nova Scotia as public health officials work to contain a growing number of Covid-19 cases in the province.
Premier Stephen McNeil announced Monday that people entering the province from outside the Atlantic Bubble will now have to quarantine by themselves.
If they can’t, everyone in the same home as they are will also have to stay in quarantine for a full 14 days.
“What that means is what it says: you don’t go to work, you don’t go to school, you don’t go shopping or the grocery store,” McNeil said at a press conference.
Some exceptions to the new rule are specialized workers like truckers and first responders, military personnel, and people with special permission to attend a funeral.
McNeil said rotational workers are also exempt from the new rules but that the province is looking at new strategies for monitoring them for possible infection.
The new rules come as the province investigates a cluster of Covid-19 infections that spread after someone living with a person who was quarantining went into the community and exposed other people to the virus.
Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer of health, says the province currently has 16 active cases of Covid-19.
Of those cases, nine are related to the active cluster and Strang says each case is still under some form of active investigation.
Strang said public health officials are still trying to untangle the web of connections inside the cluster to figure out exactly how the infection spread.
To that end, health officials have released a series of public announcements since the start of November warning people of possible Covid-19 exposure at several locations in Halifax.
Strang said anyone who was at the following locations during the given times should call 811 and arrange a Covid-19 test immediately, regardless of whether they have symptoms.
- The Bitter End Martini Bar on November 2, from 9 pm until closing time.
- Montana’s BBQ and Bar in Bayers Lake on October 25, from 6 pm until closing time.
- All Nations Full Gospel Church on October 25, from 6 pm until closing time.
Strang said his team is still investigating all the cases related to the cluster. While it’s too early to say for sure if there is community spread of Covid-19 in the province, he can’t rule it out.
“We’re at a point where we can’t say there’s broad community spread, but we can’t say there’s not either,” he said.
He said the Nova Scotia is right now at a “critical tipping point” that will decide how bad the second wave of Covid-19 becomes.
“We all need to make changes if we are going to change out trajectory,” he said. “This is a wake-up call for all of us.”
Strang said he and his team aren’t ready to reimpose any more restrictions right now, but it is possible and that they are already planning for what that would look like.
Even if restrictions do happen, he said, they likely won’t be a kind of blanket ban similar to the ones instituted at the beginning of the pandemic. Instead, he’s looking at a “much more targeted approach” that could even differ from community to community.
“We certainly don’t plan to lock the province down again unless that’s absolutely necessary,” he said.