There are 277 new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba on Wednesday and 14 more people have died from the illness, Manitoba’s top doctor says.
While Manitoba’s daily new COVID-19 cases have started to stabilize, they’re still at a number too high for the province’s health-care system to sustain, Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said at a news conference on Wednesday.
“We can’t rest at these numbers, even though we’ve seen some minor improvements,” Roussin said. “We still have too much strain on our ICUs and hospitals and too much strain on our health-care professionals.”
There are now 351 people in hospital with the illness, Roussin said, a new high in the province. Of those people, 51 are in intensive care.
As of Wednesday morning, Manitoba’s critical care program was working at 147 per cent of its pre-pandemic capacity, Shared Health Chief Nursing Officer Lanette Siragusa said at the news conference.
Patients with COVID-19 made up just under half of the 106 patients in critical care units, Siragusa said. Of the 78 on ventilators, 44 have the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, she said.
The deaths announced Wednesday include a woman in her 40s from the Winnipeg health region and seven others linked to outbreaks across the province, Roussin said.
Five are connected to sites in Winnipeg: two women in their 80s at the St. Norbert Personal Care Home, a woman in her 80s at the Golden Links Lodge, a woman in her 90s at the Bethania Mennonite Personal Care Home and a woman in her 90s at the Charleswood Care Centre.
The other two — women in their 80s and 90s — are linked to Rest Haven Nursing Home in Steinbach.
The remaining deaths announced Wednesday are two men in their 60s (in the Southern and Winnipeg health regions), two men in their 70s (in the Southern and Winnipeg health regions) and two women in their 80s (in the Southern and Winnipeg health regions).
The latest fatalities bring Manitoba’s total deaths linked to COVID-19 to 342.
Manitoba’s five-day test positivity rate — a rolling average of the COVID-19 tests that come back positive — is now 13.2 per cent. In Winnipeg, the rate is 14.5 per cent, Roussin said.
The latest cases bring the total number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Manitoba to 17,384. Of those, 8,072 have recovered and 8,970 are considered still active — though Roussin has previously said that number is inflated due to a data entry backlog.
Outbreaks have been declared at three more sites in Manitoba: the Morris General Hospital, the Rosewood Lodge Personal Care Home in Stonewall and Carpathia Children’s Centre in Winnipeg, Roussin said.
Outbreaks previously declared at St. Paul’s Personal Care Home in Dauphin and the Kekinan Centre in Winnipeg have been declared over.
Nearly three-quarters of the cases announced Wednesday (200) are in the Winnipeg health region. There are 28 new cases in the Northern Health region, 24 in the Southern Health region, 15 in the Interlake-Eastern health region and 10 in the Prairie Mountain Health region.
Sites where there were possible COVID-19 exposures are listed by region on the province’s website.
It has now been three weeks since all of Manitoba moved to the critical red level of the province’s pandemic response system.
Code red restrictions that went into effect on Nov. 12 included new rules limiting gatherings and closing non-essential businesses. Even tighter restrictions, banning gatherings in private homes and barring sales of non-essential goods even in businesses deemed essential services, were brought in on Nov. 20.
Premier Brian Pallister said on Tuesday his “gut feeling” was that those restrictions would likely be extended past the expiry date of Dec. 11 — though he said he would defer to Roussin, who said again on Wednesday that it’s still too early to say.
“We’re seeing our ICUs over capacity, our health-care system very strained, and Dec. 11 is coming up quite quickly,” he said.
“I can’t advise on the specifics, but we’re going to have some restrictions in place for the near future, for the foreseeable future, because we just, we can’t sustain numbers like we’re seeing right now.”
Meanwhile, accused COVID-19 rule breakers were fined more than $180,000 in the last week, the province said on Tuesday.
About one-fifth of those tickets were related to gatherings larger than five people. Springs Church in Winnipeg was handed four fines totalling $20,000 for holding a drive-in service last weekend, data from the province says.
A new benefit announced Wednesday morning will allow Manitoba doctors who are forced to self-isolate because of COVID-19 to be compensated for their sick time away from work. The province has also signed a pay agreement that will allow nurses to be shifted to priority areas during the pandemic.
Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen is expected to give an update about the province’s plans for the winter school break at a news conference at 3 p.m. Wednesday.
Health officials previously acknowledged Manitoba was considering extending that break, in anticipation of a rise in COVID-19 cases over the holidays.
On Tuesday, the province’s largest school division rehearsed for a switch to remote learning if schools are forced to shut down again because of COVID-19.
There were 2,182 more COVID-19 tests completed in Manitoba on Tuesday, bringing the total done in the province since early February to 360,039.
