Three more people in Manitoba have tested positive for COVID-19, the province announced on Wednesday, bringing Manitoba’s total number of active cases to 74.
The new cases are a woman in her 30s from the Winnipeg health region, and a man in his 30s and a woman in her 50s from the Interlake-Eastern Health region, the province said in a news bulletin.
No other details about the new cases were released. Officials will only give more information about the cases if they find there’s a risk to public health, the bulletin said.
The number of people in hospital with the illness and those in intensive care doubled on Wednesday. There are now six people in hospital in Manitoba with COVID-19, four of whom are in intensive care.
A case identified on July 25 — a man in his 50s from the Winnipeg area — has been removed from Manitoba’s case total, after an investigation found the man had recovered from a previous infection from another province, the bulletin said.
There have now been 407 cases of COVID-19 detected in Manitoba, including 325 people who have recovered.
Positivity rate up slightly
The province’s five-day test positivity rate — a rolling average of the percentage of completed tests that came back as positive — is 0.44 per cent, up from 0.4 per cent on Tuesday.
The province recorded its eighth death related to COVID-19 on Tuesday: a man in his 70s from the Southern Health region. The man, who died on July 22, was not previously hospitalized and is considered a new COVID-19 case, the province said on Tuesday.
Before his death was announced, the last death linked to the illness caused by the new coronavirus in Manitoba was on May 5 — more than two-and-a-half months ago.
The province also announced a new temporary testing site in Killarney, located in the Prairie Mountain Health region, starting Wednesday.
Two other sites are moving to appointment only, including the drive-thru site in Steinbach as of Friday. A drive-thru testing site in Winkler is closed Wednesday while it’s moved to a new location at the Southland Mall, which opens Thursday and will then be by appointment only.
More information about test sites is available on the province’s website.
On Tuesday, 665 more tests for the illness were completed in the province, bringing the total number of COVID-19 tests done to 86,367.
