The “COVID creep” Premier Stephen McNeil was talking about this week wasn’t the guy – I’m just going to assume it was a guy – who ignored his COVID-19 symptoms and went out and socialized, anyway.
The premier and Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, generally steer clear of calling out individual infractions, preferring to keep their focus, and ours, on the bigger picture.
The guy broke rule number one: If you don’t feel well, stay home. Strang only mentioned the case in passing to illustrate his point that it’s essential for everyone to follow the public health protocols intended to contain the virus.
McNeil cut to the heart of the matter.
“If you feel like you are letting your guard down then it is time to smarten up,” he said. “Follow the protocols. And start caring about what really matters, each other.”
This week’s COVID-19 briefing from McNeil and Strang was held in the shadow of a troubling uptick in Nova Scotia’s case numbers in recent days – what McNeil called “COVID creep.”
The danger was further underscored by a disturbing cluster of COVID-19 in the Clayton Park area of Halifax that public health is working flat-out to get a handle on and contain.
Strang wasn’t ready to conclude that there’s broad community spread going on, but he wasn’t ruling it out, either.
Relative to most of Canada, Nova Scotia’s case numbers remain very low, as they do throughout the Atlantic bubble.
But success breeds complacency, and that seems to be all the virus needs to gain a foothold and spread.
McNeil drew a comparison between where Nova Scotia is today and where some of the western provinces were not that long ago.
“(A) number of my colleagues across the country would say that they were doing well too, when, out of nowhere they went from a dozen cases to hundreds of cases in no time at all.”
Manitoba, like Nova Scotia, had virtually no COVID cases all summer, but today it’s back under total lockdown, like the spring, because the virus is out of control.
Indeed, most of Canada west of the Atlantic bubble is dealing with the second wave of COVID-19 and McNeil and Strang want to make sure Nova Scotians understand it can happen here, too.
This week the province tightened rules around isolation for people coming to Nova Scotia from outside the Atlantic bubble. Those people need to isolate on their own. If they enter a household, the entire household is in quarantine for 14 days with them.
And McNeil and Strang left little doubt that that’s just the beginning. If the trend of the past few weeks continues and the case numbers continue to climb additional measures are on the way, and you know what that means.
When the numbers go up, restrictions return, likely starting with stricter limits on all manner of social gatherings.
But what McNeil and Strang were telling Nova Scotians this week is that our future remains ours to decide.
They believe – and there’s no reason to doubt them – that strict adherence to the public health protocols already in place in Nova Scotia will keep the virus in check. Anything less risks its spread which, in turn, demands stricter measures to get it back under control.
The cure for complacency is a glance to the west, where we can see what lies in store with a second wave.
McNeil and Strang said Nova Scotia is at a tipping point.
If we tip in the wrong direction, we’ll join the rest of Canada and have to deal with the second wave, more disease, deaths and even tighter restrictions.
But if we manage to tip back in the right direction by following the public health protocols, we can contain the creep, keep each other safe and avoid tighter restrictions.
It seems like an easy choice.
