Hospital, ICU admissions jump in latest Manitoba weekly COVID-19 update

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations continued to rise in Manitoba last week, according to the weekly epidemiological report released on Thursday.

From April 3 to 9, 177 people were admitted to hospital with COVID-19.

That'san increase of 36,or 25.5 per cent, over the 141 hospital admissions reported the week before.

The province also reported a jump inintensive care unit admissions 19 last week compared to 11 the previous week.

Health officials, including chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin, have said the number of hospital admissions does not accurately reflect the number of people hospitalized because of the virus, as many people are admitted for other reasons and then test positive.

According to Shared Health, there are 94 people in intensive care units in Manitoba, two more than on Wednesday.

The latest update saysfive more people died due to COVID-19 last week, bringing Manitoba's publicly reported death toll to 1,759.

On Monday, CBC News published leaked data reported on an internal provincial database. That data saidan additional five people died due the coronavirus from April 9 to11, bringing the total to 1,764.

Laboratory tests confirmed 1,694 new cases of the disease, 335 more than the 1,359 reported the previous week, an increase of 25 per cent.

Those numbers are consideredan undercount, however, because of limited access to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, the only type of tests officially recorded by the province. The province does not track positive rapid test results.

There were 829 confirmed cases in the Winnipeg health region, 265 in Prairie Mountain Health, 252 in the Interlake-Eastern health region, 215 in the Southern Health regionand 133 in the Northern Health Region.

The province's test positivity rate also rose, from 18.6 per cent to 20.7 per cent. Labs completed an average of 1,166 tests per day last week.

There was one new outbreak reported at a long-term care facility last week, compared to seven the week before.

Last month, the provincial government stopped updating the various online dashboards it had used to keep the public informed about COVID-19, instead posting only weekly updates with some numbers.