194 new COVID-19 cases, 7 deaths reported in Manitoba on Sunday

There are 194 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba on Sunday and seven more people have died after getting the illness, the province says in a news release.

Most of the new cases are in the Winnipeg health region, which reported 102.

The rest are split between the Southern Health region (which announced 42), the Prairie Mountain Health region (25), the Northern Health Region (15) and the Interlake-Eastern health region (10), the release said.

All but one of Manitoba's latest deaths have been linked to the more contagious coronavirus variants, the release said.

Five of those people had contracted the B.1.1.7, or alpha, variant first seen in the U.K.: two men in their 60s and one in his 70s from the Winnipeg health region, a man in his 70s from the Northern Health Region and a woman in her 90s from the Southern Health region.

A man in his 70s from the Southern Health region died after getting a variant that's still listed as unspecified. His case was connected with an outbreak at the Carman Memorial Hospital, the release said.

A woman in her 80s from the Southern Health region has also died after getting COVID-19, the release said. Those deaths bring Manitoba's total to 1,100.

More than 71 per cent of adults in Manitoba have now received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the province's online vaccine dashboard says. Among everyone aged 12 and up, that figure hovers just above 69 per cent.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate sank slightly to 10.8 per cent, while Winnipeg's dropped to 10.2 per cent, the release said. Both were at 11.2 per cent on Saturday.

There are now 297 Manitobans hospitalized with COVID-19, down by 14 since Saturday. Eighty-two of them are in intensive care, including 58 within Manitoba, 25 in Ontario and one in Alberta.

Manitoba started sending some COVID-19 patients out of province for critical care last month as it works to free up space in its strained hospitals.

Twenty-six people previously sent out of province for care have since been brought back to Manitoba, the release said.

Since the start of the pandemic, 54,357 Manitobans have tested positive for COVID-19, including 49,952 considered recovered and 3,305 cases still deemed active, the release said.