A jump in new COVID-19 cases continued on Friday in northern Manitoba, which reported 84 of the province’s 191 new cases.
There are also five more deaths linked to the illness, Manitoba Chief Provicial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said.
The update comes a week before provincewide restrictions that ban most gatherings and the sale of non-essential goods expire. The government is now considering reducing some of those restrictions, and is asking for input from the public in an online survey.
Manitoba’s five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate remains at 10 per cent. In Winnipeg, the rate increased slightly to 7.2 per cent from 7.1 per cent on Thursday, a news release says.
The remaining new cases are in the Winnipeg health region (71), Southern Health region (14), the Prairie Mountain Health region (13) and the Interlake-Eastern health region (nine), the release says.
The deaths announced Friday are four men and one woman ranging in age from their 70s to their 100s, the release says.
The people who died, bringing Manitoba’s total deaths to 760, are two men in their 70s (from the Winnipeg and Northern health regions) and two in their 80s (in the Winnipeg and Southern health regions), and a woman in her 100s linked to the outbreak at Winnipeg’s Charleswood Care Centre, the release says.
The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Manitoba dropped to 284 people on Friday, with 35 of them in intensive care, the release says.
A COVID-19 outbreak has been declared at the Dauphin Regional Health Centre, while another outbreak previously declared at Winnipeg’s Metropolitan Kiwanis Courts is now over, the release says.
The new cases bring Manitoba’s tally to 27,145 infections identified, with 23,478 deemed recovered, the release says. Another 2,907 are still considered active cases, though health officials have said that number is inflated because of a data entry backlog.
There were 2,025 more COVID-19 tests done in Manitoba on Thursday, which brings the province’s total to 448,061.
