Six new COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba, case count stays below 300

WINNIPEG -

Manitoba announced six new deaths linked to COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 1,062.

Three of the deaths are from the Southern Health Region and include a woman in her 60s, a woman in her 80s linked to an unspecified variant of concern, and a man in his 90s linked to the B.1.1.7 variant.

The other three deaths are from Winnipeg and include two women – one in her 70s and the other in her 90s - both connected to the B.1.1.7 variant. The other death was a woman in her 80s.

Health officials announced 267 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday; However, three previously announced cases were removed due to a data correction.

There have been 51,580 cases since March 2020.

Winnipeg had the highest number of new cases with 198 and the five-day test positivity rate is 12.9 per cent.

Despite Winnipeg continuing to have high case counts, the city's test positivity rate has dropped 3.9 percentage points since May 22 when it was at 16.8 per cent.

Southern Health had 28 cases, 21 cases came from the Northern Health Region, 14 are from the Interlake-Eastern Health Region and six are from Prairie Mountain Health.

The test positivity rate throughout Manitoba is 11.5 per cent. This has also dropped three percentage points since May 23.

Manitoba currently has 4,267 active cases and 46,251 people have recovered.

Hospitals in the province continue to deal with a high number of people infected with COVID-19, as 217 are in hospital with active COVID-19 cases, and 48 are in intensive care.

Another 77 people are no longer infectious but still require care, including 21 in ICU.

On Tuesday, 2,646 tests were completed bringing the total to 775,237 since February 2020.

Manitoba has had 11,319 variant of concern cases and currently 2,442 are active. The variants have resulted in 77 deaths in Manitoba.

The majority of variants continue to be unspecified with 6,136, followed by the B.1.1.7 variant with 5,020.

The P.1 variant has accounted for 110 cases, there has been 35 B.1.351 cases, three B.1.617 cases, eight B.1.617.1 and seven B.1.617.2.