COVID-19 pandemic in Nunavut
The COVID-19 pandemic in Nunavut is an ongoing viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
| COVID-19 pandemic in Nunavut | |
|---|---|
| Disease | COVID-19 |
| Virus strain | SARS-CoV-2 |
| Location | Nunavut, Canada |
| First outbreak | Wuhan, Hubei, China |
| Index case | Sanikiluaq |
| Arrival date | November 6, 2020 (3 years, 5 months and 3 days) |
| Date | April 5, 2022 |
| Confirmed cases | 3,531 |
| Active cases | 90 |
| Recovered | 3,435 |
Deaths | 7 |
| Fatality rate | 0.2% |
| Government website | |
| Nunavut Government | |
Until November 6, 2020, Nunavut remained the only province or territory in Canada, and the only place in North America, that had not yet recorded a confirmed case of COVID-19, with two early presumptive cases later ruled to be false positives, and clusters of cases at mines in September and October involving employees flown in from outside of the territory.
On November 6, 2020, Nunavut recorded its first confirmed case of COVID-19 in-territory. By mid-November, evidence of community transmission began to emerge, prompting the territory to reimplement restrictions in the affected communities. Nunavut's Chief Medical Officer Michael Patterson announced on November 16 that a territory-wide lockdown would take effect on November 18, reinstating the closure of schools and all non-essential businesses for at least two weeks.
In May 2021, the Mary River Mine in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Baffin Island announced an outbreak, with over 100 employees testing positive for COVID-19. Most of these cases included the Delta variant, a highly transmissible variant of the virus. When the mine shut down operations for May, it sent many workers to their southern home communities, which has led to the variant spreading to several provinces.
As of February 23, 2022, Nunavut has confirmed 2,620 COVID-19 cases, with 2,230 recoveries and five deaths.