Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin urged Manitobans to press on as he announced 133 new cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths on Monday.
“We’re certainly not back to normal, we’re not out of the woods, but we are seeing the trajectory that we were wanting to see,” he said at a news conference.
“We need to continue to have Manitobans still put in that hard work to limit the transmission of this virus.”
That hard work needs to be kept up following the holiday season, Roussin said, standing by his decision last week to extend code red restrictions until at least Jan. 22.
There are currently 738 cases of COVID-19 linked to in-person gatherings, and these cases are linked 2,879 close contacts, he said.
“These high numbers — nearly 3,000 people — just from those gatherings are now in self-isolation, a certain proportion of which will become cases. This is why we needed to extend the restrictions we had in place,” he said.
“We have to still see what the impacts of this holiday gathering was.”
Manitoba has had 741 deaths related to the novel coronavirus.
Of the deaths, two are linked to known outbreaks in health-care facilities — a man in his 80s linked to the McCreary/Alonsa Health Centre outbreak and a woman in her 80s from Bethania Mennonite Personal Care Home in Winnipeg.
A man in his 60s from the Northern Health Region also died.
Of the new cases, 47 are in the Winnipeg health region, 34 are in the Northern Health Region, 28 are in the Prairie Mountain Health region, 13 are in the Southern Health region and 11 are in the Interlake-Eastern health region.
The five-day test positivity rate — a rolling average of the percentage of tests that come back positive — dropped again on Monday to 10 per cent provincially and 8.8 per cent in Winnipeg.
The number of people in hospital with the virus also dropped. As of Monday morning, there are 316 people in hospital, said Lanette Siragusa, Shared Health chief nursing officer.
There are 37 people in intensive care because of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the first vaccinations of long-term care home residents in Manitoba started Monday morning, with residents of Oakview Place first in Winnipeg to get the shots.
Way to go Margaret! Thank you for being our first!! <a href=”https://t.co/QAFblyPlp4″>pic.twitter.com/QAFblyPlp4</a>
—@WinnipegRHA
Over the weekend, the Manitoba government expanded the COVID-19 immunization eligibility criteria to include some home care workers and first responders, and outlined its plans to establish a supersite for vaccinations in Brandon.
Outbreak updates
Another outbreak has been declared at the Headingley Correctional Centre. The province has moved it to orange, or restricted, on the colour-coded Manitoba pandemic response system.
The outbreak at the Benito Health Centre is now over.
The province announced 151 new COVID-19 cases and five more deaths from the virus on Sunday.
That brought the number of cases identified in Manitoba to 26,317. There are 20,850 considered recovered and 4,792 still deemed active, though provincial officials have said that number is inflated because of a data entry backlog.
