Your weekly COVID-19 update

Every Tuesday, the Maclean's daily newsletter will catch you up on what you need to know about Canada's fight against the coronavirus. This week, Patricia Treble focuses on one story worth watching, and you can get a sneak peek here. You'll also get the same mix of Maclean's stories you expect every day if you scroll down below.

As new border measures came into effect in Nova Scotia, barring all non-essential travellers including many of those moving to the province, the premier offered a bit of encouragement, noting that the huge backlog of COVID-19 tests had almost been cleared. That news came as the province posted 121 new cases, its lowest daily count since April 30. Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, says that he expects those counts will continue to decline as tracing is turning up fewer contacts to those who have recently tested positive, suggesting that the province’s public health restrictions on gatherings are working. Still, Strang wants to get back to where the province was just a month ago, when it reported a handful of cases at most each day.

On Sunday, Nova Scotia’s per capita rate of new cases hit a new record of 176.7 per million population, on a 14-day rolling average, before retreating slightly on Monday to 173.0. A month ago, that per capita rate was just 4.5 per million population.

Like Nova Scotia, Manitoba has been experiencing a surge in new cases. In the past week, the province has reported an average of 418 cases a day, up from 245 a day in the previous week and 221 and 133 in the two respective weeks before that. In recent days, the government has announced a series of restrictions, including switching schools in Winnipeg and Brandon to online learning. “We really needed this circuit break,” Dr. Brent Roussin, chief provincial public health officer, said. “A lot of people are very tired of this … but we do need to hang in there.” On Monday, the province’s 7-day per capita rate of daily cases topped 300 per million population for the first since Nov. 29.

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