'We are entering our fourth wave now': 93 new cases of COVID-19 in Manitoba on Monday

WINNIPEG -

Health officials in Manitoba announced 93 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, as the province says the fourth wave of the pandemic is now underway.

There have been 60,294 cases since the start of the pandemic; 366 of those cases happened since Thursday.

"The transmission of COVID is increasing; we are entering our fourth wave now," said Dr. Brent Roussin, the chief provincial public health officer.

Roussin said those who are unvaccinated are at a much greater risk of severe outcomes.

"We knew that despite relatively high vaccine uptake province-wide, we knew there were pockets of relatively low unvaccinated individuals and that put us at risk of a fourth wave and we are starting to see trends eventualize now."

Of the new cases on Monday, 67 were among people who were not fully vaccinated.

The province's five-day test positivity rate is 2.7 per cent and 1.2 per cent in Winnipeg.

The Southern Health Region had the highest number of new cases on Monday with 46, 41 of which were among people who were not fully vaccinated.

The area has seen 150 cases since Thursday.

"We're seeing that Southern Health makes up about 15 per cent of the total population of Manitoba, yet we're seeing almost half of our daily cases are coming from the region," said Roussin. "We see that testing per capita is lower in that region and then what we are seeing too is admissions to hospital right now, more than half of the people being admitted to ICU, their first test related to COVID is on that day of admission."

The top doctor added public health isn't ruling out regional restrictions, and that he is keeping an eye on the current situation.

In Winnipeg, there were 25 new cases, 10 cases were not fully vaccinated. The city has recorded 108 new cases since Thursday.

The Northern Health Region had eight new cases, six of those cases were not fully vaccinated. There have been 25 cases recorded since Thursday.

Each of the Prairie Mountain Health Region and the Interlake-Eastern Health Region had seven cases, four not fully vaccinated in Prairie Mountain Health and six not fully vaccinated in Interlake-Eastern. Prairie Mountain has had 55 cases since Thursday, while there have been 28 in Interlake-Eastern in the same timeframe.

Two deaths were also reported over the weekend; a man in his 40s from Southern Health and a man in his 60s from Winnipeg. Both deaths were reported on Sunday.

There have been 1,209 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

There are currently 646 active cases and 58,439 people have recovered.

Manitoba hospitals have 77 people linked to COVID, 43 of which have active COVID-19.

There are also 19 people in ICU; 14 with active COVID.

On Sunday, 2,480 tests were completed, bringing the total to 933,150 since February 2020.