Manitoba posts 141 new COVID-19 cases, 2 more deaths as infections rise in province

Manitoba reported141 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths on the provincial government's online portal on Friday.

Theseven-dayaverageof new cases jumped to 113 its highest mark through the fourth wave of the pandemic. The previous high was112 on Oct. 8.

The infection rates have been steadily climbing in Manitoba through the week, while they are declining in every other province.

But they are still a long way from May 22, whenManitoba hit the peak of its third wave and the seven-day average case count was 482.

Of the latest 141 cases, 83 are in the Southern health region, which also posted both deaths. That region, with just over 15 per cent of the Manitoba population,has the lowest vaccination rate in the province.

Another 22 cases are in the Winnipeg health region, 19 are in the Northern region, nine are in Prairie Mountain region and eight are in the Interlake-Eastern health region.

There is no information available about the ageor sex of the two people who died.The Manitoba government no longer holds news conferences or sends news releases on Fridays to update case numbers, although some figures are available online.

The total number of deaths in Manitoba since the pandemic started is now 1,244. That includes 237 due to variants of concern.

Friday's new cases include97 (69 per cent)in people who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. Another seven (five per cent) are in people who are partly vaccinated, the province's dashboard says, while 37, or 26 per cent, are fully vaccinated.

Among people hospitalized with active cases of COVID-19, 72 per cent are unvaccinated, while 20 per cent are fully vaccinated.

As for patients in intensive care units with active COVID-19 symptoms, 85 per cent are not vaccinated and 15 per cent are fully vaccinated.

The provincial five-day test positivity rate rose slightly to 3.9 per cent, up from 3.8per cent on Thursday. Therate for Winnipeg is 1.1, down from 1.5 per cent on Thursday.

The rates for Manitoba's other health regions, according tointernal provincial data:

• Southern: 11.7.
• Northern: 10.8.
• Prairie Mountain: 5.5.
• Interlake-Eastern: 1.5.

There are currently 1,217 active COVID-19 cases in the province (an increase of 64 from Thursday), of which 640 are variants of concern.

A total of 85 people with COVID-19 are in hospital (up from 82 on Thursday), including 25 in intensive care units (up by one).

As of midnight, there were 92 people in Manitoba's intensive care units both COVID-19 and non-COVID patients a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email. The critical care program's normal, pre-COVID baseline capacity was 72 patients.

The province on Thursday also identified 37 more cases of variants of concern on its online variant dashboard. All remain unspecified, which means they have not been classified yet as a particular variant.

There have been 20,728 variants of concern identified in Manitoba since the pandemic began.

As of Tuesday, 86.8 per cent of eligible Manitobans had received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine and 83.6 per cent had both, theprovincial vaccine dashboardsays. Both of those figures increased by just 0.1 of a percentage point.

Anyone born on or before Dec. 31, 2009, is eligible for first and second doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

There were 3,022 lab tests completed on Monday, for a total of 1,085,437 since the pandemic started.