Nova Scotia reports 4 deaths in latest COVID-19 update

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

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

Since March 2020, there have been 865 deaths related to the virus.

The province also reported 209 new cases confirmed by PCR tests, an increasefrom last week's 173lab-confirmed cases.

Nova Scotia Healthreported 89 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Thursday. This is a decrease from the previous reporting period when there were98people in hospital with COVID-19.

Of those 89 people:

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

Nova Scotia Health said there were 37 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 17of its staff were off work because of COVID-19. There are fewer than five hospitalizations at the IWK.