1,757 new cases of COVID-19, 2 deaths reported in Manitoba Tuesday

Manitoba reports 1,757 new cases of COVID-19 and two deaths on the provincial coronavirus data dashboard on Tuesday.

Most of the new cases are in the Winnipeg health region, with 1,350.

There are also 152 new cases in the Interlake-Eastern health region, 122 in the Southern Health region, 73 in the Prairie Mountain Health region and 60 in the Northern Health Region.

"We are continuing to see increased COVID-19 daily case numbers and test positivity rates," Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy chief public health officer said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference, during which provincial officials announced a one-week shift to remote learning in Manitoba schools.

Since Friday, the province has reported more than 7,100 new COVID-19 cases, Atwal said.

The provincial government did not issue a news release on Tuesday with details about the latest cases and deaths, so no information is available regarding the sex or age of people who died.

There have been 1,400 deaths related to COVID-19 in Manitoba since the start of the pandemic. There are 17,076 active cases and 68,787 people have recovered from the virus, the dashboard says.

A breakdown of the latest cases by vaccination status can be viewed on an interactive chart on the government website.

A total of 251 people are in Manitoba hospitals with COVID-19, up from 228 on Monday, with 32 of them in intensive care units.

As of midnight, there were a total of 94 COVID and non-COVID patients in intensive care, a Shared Health spokesperson said. The critical care program's normal, pre-COVID baseline capacity was 72 patients.

The five-day test positivity rate is 39.5 per cent provincially, up from 37.9 per cent on Monday. There is no update for the rate in Winnipeg, which was 32.2 per cent on Friday.

On Monday, 4,424 COVID-19 tests were done.

Atwal says there's still a backlog of about 6,500 swabs that haven't been tested. Some of the backlog has been addressed since the province scaled up its PCR testing capacity last week, he added.

As of Tuesday, 84.3 per cent of eligible Manitobans have received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, 77.2 per cent have two doses and 25.3 per cent have received their third shot, the provincial vaccine dashboard says.

The total number of doses administered in the province is now at 2,503,371 with 6,843 more scheduled to be given on Tuesday.

Manitoba modelling coming: Atwal

Last month, the province unveilled modelling based on data from other regions that suggested Manitoba could see 1,000 cases of COVID-19 a day in the new year.

Manitoba-specific modelling on the trajectory of the highly contagious Omicron variant, which public health officials have said is now the dominant coronavirus variant in the province, will hopefully be available in the next 24 hours, Atwal said at Tuesday's news conference.

Although case numbers are climbing beyond what was anticipated by public health, Atwal declined to say why Manitoba isn't moving to the red, or critical, level on the province's pandemic response system, or what it might take to get there.

"This is a rapidly evolving situation. I think we're going to continue to look at where we're at and where we might end up being," he said.

"If things change, they will be announced."