Three COVID-19 deaths Friday, Manitoba adds 74 new cases

WINNIPEG -

Manitoba health officials added three new deaths on Friday, two of which were linked to the Alpha variant.

The variant deaths include a man in his 30s from Winnipeg and a man in his 70s from the Prairie Mountain Health Region. The other death was a man in his 80s also from the Prairie Mountain Health Region.

The province has reported 1,160 deaths.

Manitoba added another 74 cases of COVID-19, but two previously announced cases were removed.

There have been 56,739 cases since the start of the pandemic and the current five-day test positivity rate is 5.1 per cent in the province and 4.6 per cent in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg continues to have the highest number of new cases with 33, followed by the Interlake-Eastern Health Region with 22. The Southern Health Region added 13 cases, five were identified in Northern Manitoba and one from Prairie Mountain Health.

There are 1,030 active cases and 54,549 people have recovered.

Manitoba also has 141 citizens in hospital with COVID-19. Of those people, 52 are in Manitoba hospitals with active COVID-19 including 14 in ICU. Another 85 people are no longer infectious but still require care, including 19 people in intensive care.

There are four Manitobans who are receiving care outside of the province, all of which are in Ontario.

With the two new variant deaths on Friday, there have been 165 deaths linked to variants of concern. Manitoba has had 8,205 unspecified variants, 6,969 Alpha variant cases, 220 Gamma variant cases, 370 Delta variant cases, and 73 Beta variant cases.

There are 580 active variant cases.

On Thursday, the province completed 1,465 tests bringing the total to 842,723 since February 2020.