I know this is old, but I feel like I always have to say it whenever there's an outbreak in the region.

Our case timelines look a bit different than other parts of the country and most other places in general.

We have nothing and then we have alot all at once.

In most other parts of the country, there's a background rate of community transmission that goes up and down (it usually looks like a wave) based on various factors.

In Atlantic Canada that background rate zero.

Except sometimes it's not. The thing is, we might not know that (and it won't show up in a case timeline) until part of the community spread gets detected gets tested.

So the wall of cases we've seen this week in Halifax are almost entirely cases that already existed that we're just finding out about now, because we're just now becoming aware of the outbreak more generally.

So we tend not to have a gradual bubble-up of cases. We just become aware of an outbreak and try to find all the cases as quickly as possible, hence *gestures at everything*

Think of it as the difference between new cases being created (bad) and existing cases being detected (good).

Most of what you're seeing in Halifax is the latter, in an attempt to prevent the former.

So, do your part and go get tested regularly!

This is also why I don't freak out* about a single day's case numbers early in an outbreak

*ok I freak out a little, jfc I'm human