Nova Scotia reports 12 deaths in latest COVID-19 update

Nova Scotia reported 12 COVID-19 deaths in its weekly update on Thursday.

All deaths were previously unreported, meaning they most likely occurred within last weeks or months.

Since March 2020, there have been 853deaths related to the virus.

The province also reported 151 new cases confirmed by PCR tests, with a daily average of 22. This isdown from the previous week when there were 196 lab-confirmed cases.

Nova Scotia Healthreported 96 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Thursday. This is anincrease from the previous reporting period when there were90 people in hospital with COVID-19.

Of those 96 people:

• 11 were in hospital for COVID-19 (including fewer than five peoplein ICU).
• 59 were in hospital for something else but have COVID-19.
• 26 patients contracted COVID-19 after admission.

Nova Scotia Health said there were 51 employees off work on Thursday because they were diagnosed with COVID-19, awaiting test results, or exposed to a member of their household who tested positive.

The IWK Health Centre said 13 of its staff were off work because of COVID or isolating due toCOVID. There are less than five hospitalizations at the IWK.