WINNIPEG -- The number of daily COVID-19 cases continues to drop in Manitoba, but COVID-19 deaths have spiked again.

While there was no public COVID-19 briefing on Tuesday, the province announced in a news release that 18 more Manitobans had died due to COVID-19, a spike over the four deaths reported on Monday.

The majority of these most recent deaths have been linked to outbreaks at personal care homes and health-care facilities across the province, including seven deaths that have been linked to an outbreak at the Oakview Place personal care home in Winnipeg.

More information about these Manitobans can be found at the bottom of this article.

The total number of deaths related to COVID-19 in the province is now 590.

While deaths spiked, COVID-19 cases continued to drop with 155 cases identified as of Tuesday morning. This is the second day Manitoba has had daily case numbers below 200.

The majority of the cases were in the Winnipeg health region which reported 92 new cases and a test positivity rate of 10.5 per cent.

The remaining cases identified on Tuesday include:

  • nine cases in the Interlake-Eastern health region;
  • 27 cases in the Northern health region;
  • 10 cases in the Prairie Mountain Health region; and
  • 17 cases in the Southern Health–Santé Sud health region.

The five-day test positivity rate in Manitoba remained at 11.5 per cent.

"We're heading in the right direction," Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's acting deputy chief public health officer, told reporters on Tuesday. "I'm not here to guess at the future. What I'm here to say is we need people to stay at home. We need people not to interact. We need our hospital numbers down."

On Tuesday, there were 275 people in hospital, including 36 people in intensive care.The Manitoba First Nations COVID-19 Pandemic Response Coordination Team (PRCT) said First Nation people account for 35 per cent of hospitalizations, and 50 per cent of the patients in intensive care.

Atwal said hospitalizations have not grown, but they haven't started to drop yet. He said the acute care system is still full and health-care workers are stretched thin.

There have been a total of 23,180 cases in Manitoba since March, including 18,208 cases that are listed as recovered. The province said as of Tuesday, there were 4,382 active cases.

While the test positivity rate may be down in parts of Manitoba, it continues to be disproportionately high among Indigenous and First Nations people living in Manitoba.

According to the PRCT, the total five-day test positivity rate among First Nations people is 20 per cent, compared to Manitoba's overall rate of 11.5 per cent.

This comes as 50 new cases and four more deaths were reported among First Nations. This brings the total number of active cases among First Nations people to 2,075, and the total number of deaths related to COVID-19 to 83.

The deaths reported in Manitoba on Tuesday include:

  • Two men in their 70s, a woman in her 80s and a woman in her 90s from the Winnipeg health region;
  • Seven people whose deaths have been linked to an outbreak at the Oakview Place personal care home in Winnipeg, including a man and woman in their 80s, four women in their 90s, and a man in his 90s;
  • A woman in her 60s whose death has been linked to an outbreak at the Charleswood Care Centre in Winnipeg;
  • A man in his 80s whose death has been linked to an outbreak at the St. Norbert Personal Care Home in Winnipeg;
  • A woman in her 90s whose death has been linked to an outbreak at the N3E family medicine unit at Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg;
  • A woman in her 80s whose death has been linked to an outbreak at Kin Place in Oakbank;
  • A woman in her 80s whose death has been linked to an outbreak at Fairview Home in Brandon;
  • A woman in her 90s whose death has been linked to an outbreak at the Grandview Personal Care Home in Grandview; and
  • A woman in her 100s from the Southern Health–Santé Sud health region.