154 new COVID-19 cases, 2 deaths in Manitoba Thursday

WINNIPEG -

Manitoba is reporting triple-digit COVID-19 cases on Thursday for the third day in a row with 154 cases, along with two deaths.

The majority of the new cases were in individuals who were not vaccinated with 95. Another seven were partially vaccinated, while 52 were fully vaccinated.

Both deaths reported on Thursday were from men in the Southern health region and linked to unspecified variants of concern. One death was a man in his 40s, the other in his 80s.

The Southern health region had almost half of the new cases with 70, with 59 of those cases in people not fully vaccinated. The Northern Health region had 21 new cases, with nine in not fully vaccinated people. The Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain health regions both had 15 cases, with seven and 11 cases, respectively, in not fully vaccinated people.

The Winnipeg region reported 33 cases of COVID-19 with 16 in not fully vaccinated people.

Manitoba’s five-day test positivity rate now sits at 4.9 per cent.

Provincial data shows there are 115 Manitobans in hospital because of the virus, with 86 of those cases being active. Seventy-five per cent of people currently in hospital with active cases of the virus are not fully vaccinated, with that percentage jumping to 100 per cent of patients in hospital ICUs with active cases.

Of those hospitalized 24 patients are in ICUs with 19 of those people having active cases of the virus.

Total infection numbers for the province sit at 1,145 active cases and 64,083 cases of COVID-19 overall after six cases were removed because of a data correction. There have been 61,685 recoveries and 1,253 deaths.

The total number of COVID-19 tests performed on Wednesday was 3,644, bringing the total number of tests completed to 1,101,265.

Unspecified variants of concern are the most prevalent in the province with 11,616 followed by the Delta variant with 7,255.

REGIONAL TEST POSITIVITY RATES PUBLISHED

The province has released a regional breakdown of the COVID-19 five-day test positivity rate.

Southern Health’s test positivity rate is the highest in the province, sitting at 14.5 per cent as of November 3. The Northern Health Region is the second-highest, with a 9.5 per cent test positivity rate.

Interlake-Eastern’s test positivity rate sits at 5.3 per cent, while the Prairie Mountain Health Region’s rate is 4.8 per cent.

Winnipeg’s test positivity rate is two per cent.