1 death, 170 new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba on Sunday

Manitoba reports 170 new cases of COVID-19 and one death Sunday, a provincial news release says.

Mostof the new COVID-19 cases announced Sunday were in the Winnipeg health region, which posted 96 new infections.

There are also 36 cases in the Northern health region, 18 in the Prairie Mountain Health region, 13 in the Southern Health region and seven in the Interlake-Eastern health region.

The seven-day average for new daily cases sits at about 138 it was about 70 at the beginning of the month.

A man in his 70s from the Prairie Mountain Health region died, bringing the total number of deaths linked to COVID-19 in Manitoba to 959.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate went up to 5.6 per cent, from 5.3 per cent on Saturday. In Winnipeg, that rate rose to 5.5 per cent from 5.4.

There are now 132 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, the province said, up from 128 on Saturday. Of those, 33 are in intensive care, up by one.

There have now been 36,159 COVID-19 cases identified in Manitoba, of which 1,688 are considered active and 33,512 recovered.

On Saturday, 2,346 COVID-19 tests were done in Manitoba, bringing the number of swabs completed in the province to 622,343 since early February 2020.

Variant case in First Nation

Meanwhile, a First Nation in Manitoba's Interlake announced its first case of a highly contagious coronavirus variant.

Fisher River Cree Nation says it's been informed of anon-reserveB117 case and is taking steps to ensure nobody else is exposed.

On Saturday, 710 cases of variants of concern were reported in Manitoba onthe province's variant dashboard, up from 704 on Friday. Of those, 287 are considered active.

Provincial data on variants of concern is updated from Tuesday to Saturday.

This update comes afterManitoba reported 183 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, marking the highestsingle-day increase since Jan. 24 near the end of Manitoba's second wave of COVID-19.

Three people also died of COVID-19, the province reported Saturday.

The province also reported that people on board a number of Air Canada flights that landed in Manitoba may have been exposed to variants of concern, including:

• April 4: AC045 from Delhito Vancouver, rows 26-32.
• April 7: AC8622 from Vancouver to Winnipeg, rows 11-17.
• April 8: AC265 from Toronto to Winnipeg, at the rear of the plane.