Two COVID-19 deaths added Thursday in Manitoba, both linked to variants

WINNIPEG -

Manitoba health officials announced two new deaths related to COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total deaths to 1,184 since the start of the pandemic.

One of the deaths was a woman in her 50s from Winnipeg, linked to the Alpha variant. The second death was a man in his 90s from the Southern Health Region and was linked to an unspecified variant.

The province added 34 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. However, 10 previously announced cases were removed.

Of the new cases, 19 are from Winnipeg, six are from Southern Health, five cases are from the Interlake-Eastern Health Region, three cases are in the Prairie Mountain Health Region, and one case is in the Northern Health Region.

There have been 57,951 cases of COVID-19 since March 2020. The five-day test positivity rate is 2.6 per cent in Manitoba and 1.8 per cent in Winnipeg.

Manitoba has 586 active cases while 56,181 people have recovered.

There are 75 Manitobans who are in hospital, 19 of which have active COVID-19. There are also 11 people in ICU, two of which are active cases.

On Wednesday, 1,590 tests were performed, bringing the total number of tests to 891,397 since February 2020.

With the two variant deaths added Thursday, there have been 189 variant deaths.

There are currently 331 active variant cases and Manitoba has had 16,858 variant cases.

Of the cases, 8,495 are unspecified, 7,195 are the Alpha variant, 828 are the Delta variant, there are 240 Gamma variant cases, 73 Beta cases and three Delta Plus cases.