Manitoba

63 new COVID-19 cases, 1 death reported in Manitoba on Sunday

There are 63 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba on Sunday, the province's online dashboard says. The number of deaths due to the illness rose by one.

Province-wide test positivity rate creeps back up to 5.3%

A laboratory technologist works to sequence the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Since the pandemic began, more than 56,000 Manitobans have tested positive for the illness. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

There are 63 new COVID-19 cases in Manitoba on Sunday, the province's online dashboard says.

The number of deaths due to the illness rose by one since Saturday, the dashboard says, for a total of 1,161.

The province is no longer sending out COVID-19 news releases on weekends. That means updates on Saturdays and Sundays will now come from the province's online dashboard, which contains fewer details.

For example, that dashboard does not include extra information on deaths such as the person's age or what health region they lived in.

Those and other details are expected in the province's next COVID-19 news release on Monday.

Manitoba's five-day test positivity rate jumped slightly, up to 5.3 per cent from five per cent on Saturday.

There are now 135 people hospitalized with the illness in Manitoba, including 34 in intensive care. That doesn't include people in facilities outside Manitoba, a strategy the province started using in mid-May to free up space in its strained hospitals.

On Friday, there were still four Manitobans receiving critical care in Ontario hospitals.

As of Sunday, Manitoba has fully vaccinated 56.9 per cent of its population age 12 and up, the province's online vaccine dashboard says. Among those with at least one dose, that number is now 76.3 per cent.

The province's third and final reopening plan immunization target is to have at least 80 per cent of eligible Manitobans with at least one dose and at least 75 per cent fully immunized by Labour Day on Sept. 6.

Manitoba has already passed the target for its second reopening phase, which had a target of getting 75 per cent with first doses and 50 per cent with both by Terry Fox Day on Aug. 2. New public health orders are expected to be announced sometime in the coming week.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 56,889 Manitobans have tested positive for COVID-19, the dashboard says. Of those people, 54,655 are considered recovered and 1,073 are still deemed active cases.