79 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Manitoba on Wednesday

There are 79 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba on Wednesday, the province's online coronavirus dashboard says.

There are 25 new cases in the Southern Health region, 24 in the Northern Health Region, 16 in the Winnipeg health region and seven each in the Prairie Mountain and Interlake-Eastern health regions.

Of the 79 newest COVID-19 cases, 52 are in people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and seven are in people who are partly vaccinated, the vaccination status dashboard says.

The total number of deaths caused by the illness remains at 1,224, including 216 linked to variants of concern.

Among people hospitalized with active COVID-19, 67 per cent are unvaccinated, nine per cent are partly vaccinated and 24 per cent are fully vaccinated.

Of the 10 patients being treated for active COVID-19 in intensive care, 80 per cent are unvaccinated, 10 per cent are fully vaccinated and 10 per cent are partly vaccinated.

There are 94 Manitobans hospitalized with COVID-19, up nine from Tuesday. That number includes those with active COVID-19 cases and those who are no longer considered infectious. Of those, 15 are in intensive care, down one.

As of midnight, there were 90 patients — including those with COVID-19 and people there for other reasons — in Manitoba's ICUs, a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email. Before the pandemic, the province's baseline capacity was 72 patients.

The province's five-day test positivity rate dipped slightly to 3.8 per cent on Wednesday, from 3.9 per cent the day before. 

Winnipeg's rate was 1.2 per cent on Tuesday, the last day the data was updated.

The province says 1,995 COVID-19 tests were done on Tuesday.

News releases are sent on Mondays and Thursdays. Some figures are available online through the province's COVID-19 dashboard on other business days.

Only six more cases were newly linked to coronavirus variants of concern in Manitoba on Wednesday.

However, the number of cases identified as linked to unspecified variants decreased by 165 Wednesday, while the number of cases associated with the delta variant increased by 167 on the province's online variant dashboard.

That suggests many cases have recently been reclassified.

There are now 923 active cases of COVID-19, including 481 linked to variants of concern.

As of Wednesday, 85.8 per cent of Manitoba's eligible population had gotten at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the province's vaccine dashboard says, while 82 per cent of eligible people have had both doses.

Just over 2,400 more doses are scheduled for Wednesday.