334 COVID-19 cases, 2 deaths reported over 3 days in Manitoba

Manitoba reported 334new COVID-19 cases and two deaths over three days on Monday, the first update since Friday.

That includes107 cases Saturday, 149 on Sundayand 78 on Monday. Sunday's total was thehighest daily number since June 19.

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussinsuggested Manitoba might be starting to see the effects of Thanksgiving gatherings in the daily case counts.

"We saw a day on on the weekend there with nearly 150 reported cases, so that's higher than what we typically see," he said at a Monday news conference."We're certainly not done with this fourth wave. We're still at risk of increasing case counts equating to strain on the health-care system."

The seven-day average daily case count in Manitoba is now back up over 100 again, at 101.It had slipped down to 83 last week.

The fourth-wave peak so far was a seven-day average of 112 on Oct. 8.

It is because of recent increases that Manitoba is extending some of its provincial health orders, said Roussin.

Officials also announced some rules willchange for the Southern Health Region, where businesses had capacities capped at 50 per cent earlier this month because the area accounted for a disproportionate amount of recent cases.

Starting Tuesday, businesses in health districts with vaccination rates above 50 per cent may lift capacity restrictions. That includes the communities of Cartier, Headingley, Macdonald, Ritchot, St. Franois Xavier and Tach.

Most new cases among unvaccinated

Of the 78 cases on Monday, 54 are in people who are unvaccinated and another five are in people who are partly vaccinated. The other 19 cases are in people who are fully vaccinated.

The Southern Health region has 36 of the latest cases (32 not fully vaccinated).

The next closest region is half of that, with 18 in the Prairie Mountain Health region (14 not fully vaccinated).

The Winnipeg health region has 12 of the new cases (seven not fully vaccinated), the Northern Health Region has 10 (five not fully vaccinated), and the Interlake-Eastern health region has two (one not fully vaccinated).

The two deaths are a manin his 70s from the Southern Health region anda manin his 80s from the Interlake-Eastern health region. Both arelinked to an unspecified variant of concern.

Manitoba's total number of deaths linked to the illness is now 1,237.

Three new outbreaks have been declared in the province:

• The Lagimodiere campus of Springs Christian Academy in Winnipeg. Grades 1 to 6 have moved to remote learning as a result.
• The Benito personal care home in the community ofBenito, near the Saskatchewan border northwest of Duck Mountain Provincial Park.
• Light of the North Covenant church inThompson.

All three have beenmoved to the redor criticallevel of Manitoba's pandemic response system.

A previously announced outbreak in St. Augustine School's Grade 6 class in Brandon is now declared over.

With the latest cases, a total of 62,907 cases of the coronavirushave been confirmed in Manitoba, and 60,599 have recovered. There are currently1,071 active cases in the province.

The five-day test positivity rate is 3.9 per cent provincially (up from 3.3 per cent on Friday) and 1.7 per cent in Winnipeg.

There are 83 people in hospital in Manitoba due to COVID-19, including 20 in intensive care.

As of midnight, there was a total of 86 peoplein Manitoba's intensive care units, including COVID-19 and non-COVID patients, a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email. The critical care program's normalpre-COVID baseline capacity was 72 patients.

Among people hospitalized with active COVID-19, 76 per cent are unvaccinated and 21 per cent are fully vaccinated.

And of the patients being treated for active COVID-19 in intensive care units, 69 per cent are unvaccinated and 31 per cent are fully vaccinated.

There were 2,130 laboratory tests completed Sunday, bringing the total number of lab tests donesince early February 2020 to 1,073,161.

A total of 2,068,410 doses of vaccine have now been administered in the province.

As of Monday, 86.6 per cent of eligible Manitobans had received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine and 83.2 per cent hadboth, the provincial vaccine dashboardsays.

Anyone born on or before Dec. 31, 2009, is eligiblefor first and second doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Manitoba vaccinesites are offering walk-in and appointment-based vaccinations for COVID-19 as well asthe seasonal flu. Appointments can be booked online or by calling 1-844-626-8222.

The province is also offering third doses of COVID-19 vaccine to certain eligible people. Information about eligibility and location of doses for those shots can be foundonline.