WINNIPEG -- Manitoba has now marked 1,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 since March 2020.
Three new deaths were reported on Wednesday, and include a woman in her 50s from the Prairie Mountain Health Region, a man in his 60s from Winnipeg, and a man in his 70s in the Interlake-Eastern Health Region.
The woman in her 50s and man in his 60s were both linked to the B.1.1.7 variant while the man in his 70s was connected to an unspecified variant.
So far, 27 deaths have been connected to a variant of concern.
The case count in the province also stayed high with 364 new cases and the test positivity rate is 12.1 throughout Manitoba.
Winnipeg had the largest number of new cases at 223, and the test positivity rate in the city is 14.4 per cent.
The Interlake-Eastern Health Region had 50 cases, followed by the Southern Health Region at 47, 34 in the Prairie Mountain Health Region, and 10 in the Northern Health Region.
Active cases are getting close to the 4,000 mark, with the total hitting 3,940 on Wednesday. The province said 38,203 people have recovered.
There have been 43,143 cases since the start of the pandemic.
The variant case total continues to grow in Manitoba with 4,822 – 1,828 are active while another 2,967 have recovered.
The B.1.1.7 variant makes up more than half of the variant cases with 2,614, while unspecified cases sit at 2,151. There have been 36 P.1 cases and 21 B.1.351.
The majority of cases continue to be linked to close contacts for all variants.
Hospitals continue to be hit hard as 162 people require care due to COVID-19, 62 of which are in intensive care.
Fifty-nine people in hospital are no longer infectious but still need care, including 12 people in ICU.
On Tuesday, 3,567 tests were performed, bringing the total to 705,377 since February 2020.
