New Brunswick is reporting nine deaths related to COVID-19 and nearly 4,000 new positive PCR tests in its latest weekly update.
For the week of March 27 to April 2, the number of hospitalizations also increased by 12 — to 78. There are currently nine people in ICU, which is an increase of four patients.
New positive tests for the week included 3,888 lab-based PCR results and 4,782 self-reported rapid test results.
New Brunswick is also changing the way it reports COVID-19 statistics.
Public Health has now launched a new website that will provide weekly updates. To “align with reporting practices in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador,” the province will now only report hospitalizations of people who were hospitalized for COVID.
In other words, the data will not include people who contracted COVID-19 while in hospital, or tested positive while being admitted for another reason.
“The number of patients on ventilators and the number of hospital staff off work due to COVID-19 will no longer be reported by Public Health, but those numbers will be available from the regional health authorities,” the province noted.
“These changes better reflect the usual surveillance and reporting of communicable diseases. As the province continues to transition to living with COVID-19, ongoing reports will aim to communicate the risks of severe disease.”
On Monday, 19 of the province’s pediatricians wrote an open letter calling for the province to reinstate mask mandates in schools and childcare settings.
Dr. Michael Dickinson, who signed the letter, said doctors in the province have seen an alarming jump in the number of COVID-19 cases among children since the end of March Break, when restrictions lifted.
Dickinson called it a “tidal wave of COVID cases.”
“It was a volume of number of cases that, quite frankly, we were surprised by and have been overwhelmed — with implications not only for the health and well-being of those schoolchildren, but also for their families at home, their parents, their first responder parents, teachers,” he said in an interview with Global News.
In the latest weekly update, the province’s data shows 124 of the 3,888 new cases based on PCR testing were in children younger than 10. A further 135 positive tests were among youth aged 10 to 19.
As well, two of the 78 hospital admissions during the week were among children under the age of 10.