Manitoba reports five new deaths linked to COVID-19; hospital cases drop slightly

The death toll linked to COVID-19 climbed on Thursday as the province added five new deaths.

The COVID-19 dashboard now shows 1,647 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

COVID-19 hospital cases saw a slight dip going from 614 on Wednesday to 607 on Thursday. There are 308 patients in hospital who are infectious.

In the ICU, there are still 38 patients, 17 of which have active COVID.

The hospital breakdown includes:

• 364 patients in Winnipeg;
• 83 patients in the Prairie Mountain Health Region;
• 62 patients in the Northern Health Region;
• 52 patients in the Southern Health Region; and
• 46 patients in the Interlake-Eastern Health Region.

The province added another 416 cases of COVID-19, but the active case count fell from 15,679 to 11,023.

Despite the drop, officials have previously stated that the case count is likely higher as at home rapid tests are not being reported toward the total.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate is 19.1 per cent.

On the vaccine front, 86.1 per cent of eligible Manitobans have received their first dose while 81.4 per cent have received two shots. Uptake for the third dose currently sits at 43 per cent.

Over 2.8 million doses of the vaccine have been administered since it was made available.