2 more deaths, 281 cases of COVID-19 reported in Manitoba on Sunday
Latest deaths are woman in 30s from Northern health region, man in 80s from Southern health region
Manitoba is reporting 281 new cases of COVID-19 and two more deaths from the illness on Sunday, a provincial news release says.
Most of the new COVID-19 cases announced Sunday were in the Winnipeg health region, which posted 178 new infections. There are also 46 new cases in the Prairie Mountain Health region, 26 in the Southern Health region, 22 in the Interlake-Eastern health region and nine in the Northern health region.
The latest deaths from COVID-19 are a woman in her 30s from the Northern Health region and a man in his 80s from the Southern Health region, linked to an outbreak at the Emerson Health Centre.
There have now been 39,274 COVID-19 cases identified in Manitoba, of which 2,540 are considered active and 35,756 considered recovered.
The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 in the province is now 978.
Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate grew to 7.7 per cent, up from 7.3 per cent on Saturday. In Winnipeg, that rate rose slightly to 8.4 per cent from 8.3.
There are now 167 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, the province said, up from 149 on Friday. Of those, 40 are in intensive care, up by one.
Data on hospitalizations wasn't available on Saturday due to a technical issue.
On Saturday, 3,188 COVID-19 tests were done in Manitoba, bringing the number of swabs completed in the province to 667,827 since early February 2020.
The province is warning that the public may have been exposed to COVID-19 on board a number of Air Canada and WestJet flights from late last month. More details can be found on the flight exposures website.
Sunday's update comes after the province reported 273 new cases of COVID-19 and two more deaths on Saturday.
The number of more contagious coronavirus variant cases identified in Manitoba shot up by 249 Saturday, bringing the total number to 2,344, according to the province's online dashboard. Of those, 978 are considered active.
Provincial numbers on variants of concern are released Tuesdays to Saturdays.
Nearly 8,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been given since Saturday, bringing the total to 491,297. Just over 38 per cent of eligible adults have received at lease one vaccine dose, the province's vaccine dashboard says.