There are 158 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba and five more people have died from the illness, the province says in a news release.
The five-day test positivity rate dropped to 9.6 in Manitoba and 7.4 in Winnipeg, the release says.
While Manitoba’s recent COVID-19 numbers have been promising, people still need to keep following public health advice, said Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba’s acting deputy chief public health officer.
“The actions taken by Manitobans [are] making a difference. However, it is too early to start a victory lap,” Atwal said at a Thursday news conference.
A surge in cases linked to holiday gatherings means Manitobans need to buckle down and adhere to public health orders, he said.
Atwal cautioned that if people let their guard down now amid lower case numbers, the progress made during the province’s time at the critical red level of the pandemic response system might be undone.
“If we let up now, all the hard work for the past several weeks could be for nothing,” Atwal said. “We could be back to where we started in November.”
There are now 289 COVID-19 patients in hospital in Manitoba, including 36 in intensive care.
Almost half the new cases announced Wednesday are in Manitoba’s Northern Health Region, the release says. A man in his 50s from that region is among the latest deaths.
There’s been an especially sharp rise in cases in certain northern communities, including Lynn Lake, which had 37 of Manitoba’s new cases on Wednesday, and Thompson, which had 14, Atwal said.
Lynn Lake, more than 800 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, had a population of less than 500 people as of the 2016 census. Thompson, which is about 650 kilometres north of Winnipeg, had a population of just under 13,000.
The other deaths announced Wednesday are a Winnipeg man in his 70s linked to the Southeast Personal Care Home and three people in their 80s: a Winnipeg woman linked to the Charleswood Care Centre outbreak, a man in the Prairie Mountain Health region linked to the McCreary/Alonsa Health Centre outbreak and a Winnipeg man in his 80s not linked to any outbreak.
These deaths bring Manitoba’s COVID-19 death toll to 753.
There are 70 new cases in the Northern Health Region, 61 in the Winnipeg health region, 12 in the Prairie Mountain Health region, eight in the Southern Health region and seven in the Interlake-Eastern health region.
A COVID-19 outbreak has been declared at Winnipeg’s Extendicare Tuxedo Villa personal care home, while the outbreak at the city’s Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre personal care home is now over, the release says.
Three previously announced cases were removed from Manitoba’s total on Wednesday because of a data correction, the release says, bringing the number of infections detected in the province to 26,695.
There were 1,778 COVID-19 tests completed in Manitoba on Tuesday, bringing the total number of swabs done in the province to 443,683 since early February 2020, the release says.
Public places where there were possible COVID-19 exposures in Manitoba are listed by region on the province’s website.
To date, 23,014 people in Manitoba have recovered from COVID-19 and 2,928 are still considered active, though health officials have said in the past that number is inflated because of a data entry backlog.
Wednesday’s update comes one day after Manitoba reported its lowest daily tally of new COVID-19 cases since mid-October. On Tuesday, the province announced 92 new infections.
