Provincial health officials announced there are 49 new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba.
The announcement was made by Dr. Brent Roussin, the province’s chief provincial health officer, Monday afternoon.
The province said of the new cases, 25 are from Monday, and 24 are from Sunday, Aug. 23.
With the 24 additional cases from Sunday, health officials are adjusting Sunday’s numbers to 96 cases.
Manitoba has had 993 cases since early March.
Of the new cases, 35 are from the Prairie Mountain Health Region, two are from the Interlake-Eastern Health Region, four are from the Southern Health Region, and eight are from the Winnipeg Health Region.
Roussin said the majority of the cases in Prairie Mountain Health are linked to intentional testing which is connected to known clusters in communal living areas.
He said there has been “substantial testing” in those areas.
“Especially from the results over the weekend, we’re actually mobile testing, where we actually went to communities to perform testing. So we got a high amount of testing done and then a significant amount of cases were identified by that,” said Roussin.
He said 31 of the cases announced on Monday are related to communal living communities in the province but said some investigations are still ongoing.
Roussin added since the start of the pandemic there have been 236 total cases connected to communal living communities, and 148 of those cases are active. He noted that these are throughout the entire province and not just Prairie Mountain Health.
There are currently six people in hospital, with one person in intensive care.
There are 395 active cases and 586 people have recovered from COVID-19.
The death toll remains at 12.
On Sunday, 1,544 tests were performed, which brings the total number of tests to 127,149 since early February.
The current five-day positivity rate is 2.9 per cent.
Roussin is also advising the public about an incident of potential exposure to COVID-19.
It happened at the Safeway Corral Centre, located at 921 18th Street North in Brandon. It happened on Aug. 15 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., Aug. 18 from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Aug. 19 from 2 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.
Roussin said the risk of transmission is low and people should seek testing if symptoms appear.
A new community testing site is being opened in Winnipeg starting on Tuesday at 2735 Pembina Hwy.
The site is going to be open on a walk-in basis and will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week.
With this, the Access Fort Garry testing site will be closing. It will close at 4 p.m. on Monday.
The Portage la Prairie Drive-Thru Community Testing Site at 245 Royal Rd. is being moved.
The current site will close on Aug. 26 and will re-open at Portage Avenue and 5th Street SE on Aug. 27.
It will be open Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Roussin once again reminded Manitobans to not get tested unless they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19.
