Only 24 Active Cases of COVID and New Brunswick is Locked Down

According to New Brunswick government statistics, currently, the Maritime province only has 24 active cases of COVID-19 currently, and only 1 of those cases has led to hospitalization. The cases are especially small when taking into account that the province has 776,827 people. 

Overall New Brunswick has only had 601 cases of COVID and only 9 “COVID-19 related deaths” which raises the question of why the province is still under a strict lockdown.

Not only does New Brunswick still have mask mandates in place, but they suspended a previous allowance for Canadians from other Maritime provinces to travel between one another without having to self-isolate for 14 days. 

For context Prince Edward Island only has 93 cases, and NewfoundLand and Labrador have only had 390 cases, both not only tiny compared to provinces to the west, but small even compared to New Brunswick.

Still, in spite of very low COVID numbers, Premier Blaine Higgs has been playing up the challenges New Brunswick faces and talking as if the economic impacts of the lockdowns were unavoidable despite the minimal risk his province has faced.

Higgs said during a press conference that:

We’re not out of challenges with the vaccine and administration of the vaccine, because we have to recover economically and we’ve got to reinvent New Brunswick in the process.

And:

We were there guarding the border between New Brunswick and Quebec, and of course, there was a federal restriction between Maine and New Brunswick. Our folks were diligent in minimizing the exposure to New Brunswickers, to Newfoundlanders, to Nova Scotia, to P.E.I.

The perceived overplay of the pandemic in New Brunswick is not restricted only to the premier, the news media has also been greatly exaggerating the seriousness of the situation, churning out article after article keeping up with the most minute of updates on new cases of COVID. Often simply searching “New Brunswick” for news results in mostly articles related to COVID.

It shouldn’t be a shock to those in the government or the mainstream media that many people are frustrated in places like New Brunswick, or more rural areas of provinces with high COVID cases, with the lockdowns and mask mandates. All of the various measures put in place, even if mild, can feel exhausting to follow when they feel completely unnessesary.