Manitoba breaks 4th wave daily case count record again with 185 new COVID-19 cases, 4 deaths

There are 185 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba more than any other single-day total during the fourth wave and four more deaths from the illness, the provincial COVID-19 data dashboard showed Tuesday.

Tuesday's new case countis just over the 183 reported Saturday, which at that time was the daily high for the fourth wave. The last time daily cases were in that range was in mid-June.

The provincial test positivity rate continues to climb: it was 5.4 per cent Monday and rose to six per cent Tuesday.

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 dropped slightly to 138 on Tuesday, down from afourth-wave high of 141 on Monday.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care rose slightly to 28.Of those, 21 are considered active infections. There were 26 in ICU Monday, with18considered active.

Manitoba's ICUs continue to operate above pre-pandemic levels. Prior to COVID-19, there was capacity for 72 critical care patients in the province. There are currently 96 people in total in Manitoba ICUs, including both COVID-19 patients and thosereceiving care for other conditions.

There have now been 1,266 reported COVID-19 deaths in the province. Details such as theage, sex and location of the latest deaths are not released via the online dashboard.

There have been several hundred more cases involving coronavirus variants of concernidentified since the provincial variant dashboard was updated last week.

The majority of new variant cases listed 346 are unspecified variants,including 92in the Winnipeg health region, 142 in the Southern Health region and 56 in the Northern Health Region.

The province also updated the case numbers forschools for the first time since last week.

Another 156cases involving school-age children or school staff have been addedon the province's website. The total number of cases in school staff and school-age childrensince the start of the year is now 916.

There were 117 schools with one or more cases in the 14-day period ending Nov. 7, up from 110 reported last week. There are currently three schools with declared outbreaks.

On Monday, the province released its weekly epidemiological report showing that children and youth those age 19 and under make up the largest proportion of new cases in recent weeks.