WINNIPEG -- The province has announced more than 60 new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba, the majority of which are in the Winnipeg health region.

On Thursday during a press conference, Dr. Brent Roussin announced a total of 67 new cases have been identified, though a previously announced case has been removed from the total.

All but 10 of the cases announced on Thursday were in Winnipeg, which saw 57 new cases as of 9:30 in the morning.

The other cases include:

  • one case in the Prairie Mountain Health region;
  • six cases in the Southern Health–Santé Sud health region;
  • three cases in the Interlake-Eastern health region

The province now has 863 active cases, though Roussin said this number may be an overestimate. He said cases are usually considered active for only 10 days.

"There is a bit of a delay in getting those into the system, so we do have a lot more active cases but the ones we are reporting right now are a significant over estimate," Roussin said.

"It's a low priority for Public Health right now on the reporting of those cases – certainly no one is self-isolating who doesn't need to be."

WHERE THE MOST COVID-19 CASES ARE IN MANITOBA

Winnipeg, which has 745 active cases, remains in the orange restricted level in the province's pandemic response system, along with surrounding municipalities.

Roussin said it is still too early to see results from the restrictions that were put in place on Sept. 28.

"We all want to see the downward trend right away, but even if we don't see that, it doesn't mean these (restrictions) aren't effective," he said. "We could have been seeing much more cases, but for the restrictions."

The majority of Winnipeg's active COVID-19 cases are in the Downtown area which has 157 active cases. This is followed by River East which has 150 active cases, and Seven Oaks which has 74 active cases.

The test-positivity rate for the Winnipeg region is now at 3.3 per cent. Roussin said most of Winnipeg's cases are close contacts to other COVID-19 cases.

He said in the past seven days, there have been seven non-epi-linked cases.

The Interlake-Eastern region has 67 active cases, followed by Southern Health – Santé Sud which has 25 active cases, Prairie Mountain Health which has 14 active cases, and the Northern health region which has 12 active cases.

The current five-day test positivity rate in all of Manitoba is now at three per cent.

Since the first case was announced in Manitoba in March, the province has seen 2,344 cases. As of Thursday, 1,454 people have recovered from COVID-19.

'WE WILL SEE MORE DEATHS': A DEADLY WEEK IN MANITOBA

There are 25 people in hospital and six in intensive care.

The number of deaths remains at 27. In the past eight days in Manitoba, there have been seven deaths related to COVID-19.

"We know that the majority of people who contract COVID-19 recover, but we know that there is a relatively predictable amount of individuals that will have severe outcomes including death," Roussin said.

"The more cases we see, we are going to see more hospitalizations, more ICU admissions, and unfortunately we will see more deaths."

The province said it completed 2,736 laboratory tests on Wednesday, bringing the total number of tests done since early February to 200,710.