WINNIPEG -- The province has announced three new deaths linked to COVID-19 on Saturday, bringing the province’s death toll to 967.

Two of the deaths come from the Winnipeg area, including a man in his 40s and a woman in her 60s. The third death was a man in his 80s from the Prairie Mountain Health Region, linked to the Russell Health Centre outbreak.

Manitoba also added 276 new cases of the virus, however, six previously announced cases were removed due to a data correction. The province has had 37,339 COVID-19 cases since March 2020.

Winnipeg – which has a test positivity rate of 7.2 per cent – saw the majority of the cases with 183. The Prairie Mountain Health Region had 34, the Southern Health Region had 27, 21 came from the Northern Health Region and 11 in the Interlake-Eastern Health Region.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate is 6.8 per cent.

There are currently 1,891 active cases in Manitoba and 34,481 people have recovered from the virus.

The variants of concern total also grew on Saturday with 108 new cases identified. There are currently 1,309 variant cases, 558 of those are active.

The B.1.1.7 variant, first found in the United Kingdom, continues to be the majority of variant cases at 858. There are still 20 B.1.351 cases, four P.1 cases and 427 are unspecified.

Manitoba has 74 people in hospital with active COVID-19, including 21 in intensive care. Another 66 still require care but are no longer infectious, including 13 in ICU.

On Friday, 2,815 tests were performed, pushing the total to 640,928 since February 2020.