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.

“The daily data doesn’t reflect the true COVID-19 numbers for most provinces as many jurisdictions didn’t report over all or part of the long weekend. And yes, even the seven-day or 14-day trends are affected.”

So goes the post-holiday mantra of many of us who have crunched COVID-19 data since the start of the pandemic. While readers can see that Canada reported 1,915 cases on Monday, down from 5,318 the previous Monday, that low number reflects the reality that Ontario took Monday off, while many of its local health units didn’t report during the entire weekend. Testing numbers are affected, too: On Monday, only 18,437 tests were reported, down from 75,000 the previous Monday.

While many provinces took the weekend off, Nova Scotia was working: in addition to Premier Iain Rankin announcing that he had gotten his first shot of vaccine, the province reported 49 new cases, its lowest daily count since April 23. And that has dropped its average to 72 per day, compared to 113 a day over the previous week and 168 a day for the week before that. Still, provincial health officials encouraged everyone to get tested, noting that there were still signs of community spread in the Halifax area as well as in Sydney, CTV News reports.

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