Manitoba again sets new daily COVID-19 case count record with more than 900 cases Wednesday

Manitoba has once again set a new daily COVID-19 case count record, a day after setting the old record.

The province recorded 947 new cases on Wednesday, bringing the active case count to 7,488.

Of the new cases, 667 are in Winnipeg, 99 in the Prairie Mountain Health Region, 91 in the Interlake-Eastern Health Region, 82 in the Southern Health Region, and eight cases in the Northern Health Region.

Officials said 143 of the cases were people who are not fully vaccinated.

The five-day test positivity rate is 24.2 per cent in Manitoba and 26.2 per cent in Winnipeg.

Dr. Brent Roussin, the chief provincial public health officer, said there is still a significant testing backlog throughout the province.

"The numbers we report are definitely an underestimate of the amount of transmission that we are seeing right now," said Roussin.

He added the test positivity rate is also impacted by the severe backlog right now.

Roussin is also reminding people that while they wait for a test result, which can be as long as four days, they need to isolate until they get their results back.

One new death was also announced, which means the death toll now sits at 1,384.

Wednesday's death was a woman in her 50s from Southern Health.

Health officials also provided more details about the five deaths from Tuesday. One death was in Southern Health and was a man in his 80s.

The other four were all in Winnipeg and included a woman in her 50s, a man in his 70s, a woman in her 80s, and a woman in her 40s linked to an unspecified variant of concern.

In hospitals, there are 183 patients requiring care due to COVID-19; 141 people are still infectious. In the ICU, there are 29 patients, with 25 having active COVID-19.

In the last six weeks, 179 hospital patients have been unvaccinated, 139 have two doses, 17 have had one dose and 24 have received three shots of the vaccine.

In the ICU, the majority of patients, 65, were not vaccinated, 16 had two doses, two had one dose and three had three shots.

The province says people who are not fully vaccinated are nine times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID and 26 times more likely to be admitted to ICU.

Looking at deaths over the last six weeks, 53 of the deaths were among those who were not vaccinated. Twenty of the deaths were those who had two doses, one had a single shot and nine had three doses.

According to the province, people who are not fully vaccinated are 17 times more likely to die with COVID-19.