'We are heading in the right direction': 702 COVID patients in hospital, 47 in ICU in Manitoba

Manitoba's public health officials say the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations is beginning to plateau, though they are still higher than public health would like.

According to the provincial COVID-19 dashboard, there were 702 COVID-19 positive patients in hospital Monday morning.

Dr. David Matear, the health system co-lead of Unified Health Sector Incident Command, said this is a drop of 14 compared to Sunday.

"The good news is that these numbers have continued to plateau in recent days. In the past week, we've seen the number of COVID-positive patients hospitalized decrease by 4.5 per cent," he said.

"We are heading in the right direction."

Matear said as of midnight, there were 109 adult patients in ICU – including 47 COVID-positive patients. He said there are also two COVID-positive patients in the pediatric ICU.

"While new COVID admissions to ICU are still higher than we'd like, these numbers are coming down from what we were seeing a week or two ago."

Matear said the pre-pandemic adult ICU baseline was 72 patients.

According to the province, the number of ICU admissions for the week ending Feb. 3, dropped by 19 per cent from the previous week.

But Matear said the province has seen a shift in the kind of COVID-19 cases people are being admitted into intensive care with.

He said a few weeks ago while the Omicron variant was the dominant strain across the province, the majority of ICU patients were still confirmed with the Delta variant. But he said recent analysis shows about 90 per cent of ICU patients with COVID-19 now are confirmed to have the Omicron variant.

"What this tells us is that while Omicron is showing less severe outcomes for most Manitobans there are still those in our community who are vulnerable to severe illness," Matear said.

Five more deaths of people with COVID-19 were reported on Monday, bringing the total number of COVID-19 deaths to 1,600 in Manitoba. The province reported three deaths on Saturday and seven deaths on Sunday.

The province added 258 new COVID-19 cases – though public health officials say this number is underreported, as positive results from rapid tests taken at home are not included.

The total number of reported COVID-19 cases in Manitoba is 123,739, including 18,544 active cases and 103,595 reported recoveries.

The provincial five-day test positivity rate is 27.3 per cent.