Manitoba reports 51 COVID-19 cases, 1 death on Wednesday

Manitoba reported 51 new COVID-19 cases and one more death linked to the illness on Wednesday.

Almost half of the new cases — 23 — are in the Southern Health region, the province's online coronavirus dashboard says. Another 17 are in the Winnipeg health region.

The rest of the new infections are split between the Prairie Mountain Health region with six cases, the Interlake-Eastern health region with three and the Northern Health Region with two, the dashboard says.

More than three-quarters of the new cases are among people not fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the province's vaccine status dashboard says. Thirty-six of the 51 new cases were in people who hadn't gotten either shot and three were in people who weren't fully vaccinated.

Manitoba also reported 45 cases newly linked to more contagious coronavirus strains, the province's online variant dashboard says. All are still listed as unspecified variants.

The number of deaths linked to coronavirus variants in Manitoba also increased by one on Wednesday.

No other information about the person who died was announced.

Details about the person — including their age bracket and health region — are expected to be released when the province puts out its next COVID-19 news bulletin on Thursday.

The latest death brings Manitoba's total linked to COVID-19 to 1,235.

There are now 87 people in hospital after getting COVID-19, down from 92 on Tuesday. In intensive care, there are now 19 people who have been diagnosed with the illness — up from 14.

As of midnight, there were 91 patients — some with COVID-19 and some without — in intensive care units across Manitoba, a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email.

That's up from 86 on Friday, which was the last time that number was updated. The critical care program's pre-pandemic baseline capacity was 72 patients, the Shared Health spokesperson said.

People who haven't been fully vaccinated also make up most of Manitoba's active cases (71 per cent), hospitalizations (80 per cent) and intensive care admissions for COVID-19 (63 per cent), the dashboard says.

The proportion of eligible Manitobans vaccinated with at least one dose remains 86.3 per cent, while the proportion with both doses rose slightly to 82.8 per cent.

The province's five-day test positivity rate dropped slightly to 3.1 per cent from 3.3 on Tuesday, when another 2,451 COVID-19 tests were completed.

There are now 998 active COVID-19 cases in Manitoba and 60,150 people deemed recovered after getting the illness.