Fourteen people who landed in Manitoba’s intensive care units after getting COVID-19 have now been transferred to hospitals across Ontario.
That includes four patients moved later Sunday, after the province provided that day’s update on Manitoba’s efforts to free up space in its strained intensive care units, a spokesperson for Shared Health said.
In Manitoba, there are now 318 people in hospital after contracting the illness, up by two since Sunday, the province’s online coronavirus dashboard says.
That number includes 74 people who remain in intensive care units within Manitoba, the dashboard says. On top of the patients moved to Ontario, the total number of COVID-19 ICU patients from the province is now 88 — a record high for Manitoba.
Patients who have or had COVID-19 now make up roughly 62 per cent of the province’s total 119 patients in intensive care units, the Shared Health spokesperson said. Eleven of them are under age 40.
Since last Tuesday, five patients have been moved to Thunder Bay, one has been moved to London and two each have been moved to Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay and Windsor, the spokesperson said.
Manitoba also reported 353 new COVID-19 cases while its death toll rose to 1,033 on Monday, the dashboard says.
That’s four more deaths than the dashboard showed on Sunday. However, the online tool sometimes adjusts its totals to account for cases or deaths removed from Manitoba’s totals after data corrections.
Most of the new cases are in the Winnipeg health region, which reported 269 new infections. The rest are split between the Southern Health region (which posted 37 new cases), the Prairie Mountain Health region (21), the Interlake-Eastern health region (15) and the Northern Health Region (11), the dashboard says.
Manitoba’s five-day test positivity rate sank slightly to 14.3 per cent on Monday, the dashboard says, down from 14.5 on Sunday.
On Sunday, Winnipeg’s test positivity rate had reached 16.7 per cent, though that number is not included on the province’s dashboard and won’t be updated again until Tuesday.
Most COVID-19 test sites in Manitoba are open on Monday. A full list of locations and their hours is available on the province’s website.
Because of the Victoria Day holiday, there will be no COVID-19 news release or media briefing on Monday, the province said in an email to media outlets on Friday.
Regular updates, including a news conference with Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba’s chief public health officer, will resume Tuesday, the province said.
Updates on more contagious coronavirus variants are only provided Tuesday through Saturday. As of the most recent numbers available from Saturday, those strains make up at least 2,965 — or nearly 60 per cent — of Manitoba’s 5,061 cases that are still considered active, provincial numbers show.
Manitoba has now reported 48,787 COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, including 42,693 deemed recovered, the dashboard says.
