WINNIPEG -- Manitoba has added three new deaths linked to COVID-19 on Wednesday.

The deaths include a woman in her 50s in the Prairie Mountain Health Region, a man in his 70s from Winnipeg, and a man in his 80s from the Southern Health Region.

There have been 954 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The province also added another 86 cases of COVID-19. Six previously announced cases were removed due to a data correction, meaning there have been 35,539 cases since March 2020.

Winnipeg had the highest number of new cases with 53, followed by the Northern Health Region with 16 cases. The Interlake-Eastern Health region had seven cases and both the Prairie Mountain Health Region and the Southern Health Region had five cases each.

The five-day test positivity rate is 5.3 per cent in Manitoba and 5.2 per cent in Winnipeg.

Another 81 variant of concern cases were identified on Wednesday. Manitoba has had 560 variant cases and there are 225 active cases, and 333 people have recovered. Two deaths related to the B.1.1.7 variant have been reported.

The majority of the variant cases are the B.1.1.7 variant with 490, 20 are the B.1.351 variant and 50 are uncategorized.

Most of the cases are being linked to known close contacts.

There are currently 1,439 active COVID-19 cases in the province and 33,146 people have recovered.

Manitoba has 64 people in hospital that have COVID-19, including 16 in ICU. Another 78 people are no longer infectious but still require care, including 21 people in intensive care.

On Tuesday, 2,436 tests were performed, bringing the total to 610,799 since February 2020.