Nova Scotia reports 1 death in final weekly COVID-19 update

Nova Scotia reported one COVID-19 deathin its final weekly update on the provincialdashboard Thursday.

The province will continue to provide statistics on COVID-19 throughmonthly reports.

The death was categorized as"previously unreported," meaning itmost likely occurred within the last weeks or months.

Since March 2020, there have been 866deaths related to the virus.

The province also reported 171 new cases confirmed by PCR tests, a decreasefrom last week's 209 lab-confirmed cases.

Nova Scotia Healthreported 99 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Thursday. This is an increase from the previous reporting period when there were 89people in hospital with COVID-19.

Of those 99 people:

• 20 were in hospital for COVID-19 (fewer than five in the ICU).
• 49were in hospital for something else but have COVID-19.
• 30 patients contracted COVID-19 after admission.

There were fewer than five hospitalizations COVID-19 at theIWKon Thursday.

Nova Scotia Health said there were 49 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. TheIWKHealth Centre said 16of its staff were off work because of COVID-19.