HALIFAX - With daily COVID-19 case counts breaking the 1,000-case benchmark for the second time in as many days, Public Health officials have confirmed that the current restrictions regarding gathering limits and social distancing may remain in effect beyond their original deadline of January 12. 

Monday's COVID-19 media briefing for Nova Scotia saw the province's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Strang, confirm that the surge in daily case numbers - which clocked in at 1,020 on Monday after reaching an all-time high of 1,184 on Sunday - could require a longer period of time for several restrictions that came into effect three days before Christmas. These include a 10-person limit on household gatherings, a 25-person limit on outdoor gatherings, and the most stringent rules in over six months on gathering limits within businesses, sports and arts activities, public events and houses of worship.

In the meantime, the province is now welcoming residents aged 30 or over to make appointments for vaccine booster shots. The age cohort dropped to this demographic on Monday morning, and 1,646 Nova Scotians had signed up to help staff community vaccination clinics, according to figures confirmed by Communications Nova Scotia during Monday afternoon's media briefing. 

As for the development of community clinics in the Eastern and Western Zones, which Premier Tim Houston had pledged during the previous Nova Scotia media briefing on December 30, the premier is once again insisting that these clinics will come together quickly and efficiently.

"This is a major push inside of Public Health and the Department of Health, and of course within the Nova Scotia Health Authority, to get as many of these community clinics going as we can," Houston said in response to a question from Telile Community Television news host/producer Adam Cooke.

"The supply [of vaccines] is there, so now it's a matter of the human resources...The more people that step forward and help out, the quicker we can get the boosters in arms, whether that's in a pharmacy or a community clinic or wherever the case may be. We'll make them available wherever we can."

In the meantime, Dr. Strang confirmed that the province continues to seek out new means of distributing rapid test kids to citizens but has not ruled out returning these kits to libraries, one month after Nova Scotia's public library system was asked to pause this activity. 

"As we get more supplies, we may go back to looking at the libraries as a public access point," Dr. Strang said in response to Cooke's second question.

"There's active discussion going on around how we make sure, especially in our more rural communities, that there's reasonable, close-in-terms-of-geography access to rapid testing kits. So we haven't ruled out that we may use libraries as part of that as we move forward."

The next provincial COVID-19 media briefing is slated for this coming Wednesday afternoon.